One  Third  Off 


By  Irvin  S.  Cobb 


Fiction 


FROM    PLACE   TO  PLACE 

THOSE   TIMES   AND  THESE 

LOCAL   COLOR 

OLD   JUDGE    PRIEST 

BACK   HOME 

THE   ESCAPE  OF  MR.  TRIMM 


Wit  and  Humor 


A   PLEA   FOR  OLD   CAP   COLLIER 

ONE   THIRD   OFF 

THE    ABANDONED   FARMERS 

THE   LIFE   OF  THE   PARTY 

EATING  IN   TWO  OR  THREE  LANGUAGES 

"OH  WELL,   YOU   KNOW  HOW  WOMEN   ARE  P* 

FIBBLE   D.D. 

"SPEAKING  OF  OPERATIONS — " 

EUROPE   REVISED 
ROUGHING   IT  DE   LUXE 
COBB'S  BILL  OF  FARE 
COBB'S   ANATOMY 


Miscellany 


THE  THUNDERS  OF  SILENCE 
THE  GLORY  OF  THE  COMING 
PATHS  OF  GLORY 
"SPEAKING  OF  PRUSSIANS — " 


New  York 
George  H.  Doran  Company 


I    WEIGHED    MYSET.F    AXD   IN    THE    BOX    SCORE    CREDITED    MYSELF    WITH    A 

PROFOUND   SHOCK. 

Frontispiece 


One  Third  Off 

By 

Irvin  S.  Cobb 

H 

Author  of 

"Old  Judge  Priest/'  "Speaking 
of   Operations — "   Etc. 


Illustrated  by  Tony  Sarg 


New  York 
George  H.  Doran  Company 


Copyright,  1921, 
By   George  H.   Doran   Company 


Copyright, 
By  The  Curtis  Publishing  Company 

Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


One  Third  Off 


one 


TO 

HARRY  M.  STEVENS,  ESQUIRE 

WHO  IN  TIMES  GONE  BY  HELPED  ME 
PUT  THAT  ONE  THIRD  ON 


One  Third  Off 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  ONE  :  PAGE 

Extra!  Extra!  All  About  the  Great 
Reduction! 15 

CHAPTER  TWO : 

Those  Romping  Elfin  Twenties     .        25 

CHAPTER  THREE: 

Regarding    Liver-Eating     Watkins 

and  Others 31 

CHAPTER  FOUR: 

/  Become  the  Panting  Champion    .       41 

CHAPTER  FIVE: 

On  Acquiring  Some  Snappy  Pores    .        55 

CHAPTER  SIX: 

More  Anon •       65 

CHAPTER  SEVEN: 

Office  Visits,  $10     ...'..        75 

CHAPTER  EIGHT: 

The  Friendly  Sons   of   the  Boiled 
Spinach 95 

CHAPTER  NINE: 

The  Fallen  Egg in 

ix 


x  One  Third  Off 

CHAPTER  TEN:  PAGE 

Wherein  Our  Hero  Falters       .      .      121 

CHAPTER  ELEVEN: 

Three  Cheers  for  Lithesome  Grace 
Regained!      .......      145 


One  Third  Off 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


I  weighed  myself  and  in  the  box  score 
credited  myself  with  a  profound  shock 

Frontispiece 

PACK 

"64  Broad" 19 

To  observe  Mr.  Bryan  breakfasting  is  a 

sight  worth  seeing 45 

"You  are  now  registering  the  preliminary 
warnings " 87 


One  Third  Off 


CHAPTER  ONE 


Extra!   Extra!   All  About  the 
Great  Reduction! 


One  Third  Off 


CHAPTER  I 

Extra!    Extra!    All  About 
The  Great  Reduction! 

THE  way  I  look  at  this  thing  is  this 
way:  If  something  happens  to  you 
and  by  writing  about  it  you  can 
make  a  bit  of  money  and  at  the  same  time 
be  a  benefactor  to  the  race,  then  why  not? 
Does  not  the  philanthropic  aspect  of  the 
proposition  more  than  balance  off  the  mer 
cenary  side?  I  hold  that  it  does,  or  at  least 
that  it  should,  in  the  estimation  of  all  fair- 
minded  persons.  It  is  to  this  class  that 
I  particularly  address  myself.  Unfair- 
minded  persons  are  advised  to  take  warning 
and  stop  right  here  with  the  contemporary 
paragraph.  That  which  follows  in  this  lit 
tle  volume  is  not  for  them. 

An  even  stronger  motive  impels  me.    In 
hereinafter  setting  forth  at  length  and  in  de- 

15 


16         One  Third  Off 

tail  the  steps  taken  by  me  in  making  myself 
thin,  or,  let  us  say,  thinner,  I  am  patterning 
after  the  tasteful  and  benevolent  examples 
of  some  of  the  most  illustrious  ex-fat  men  of 
letters  in  our  country.  Take  Samuel  G. 
Blythe  now.  Mr.  Blythe  is  the  present  in 
ternational  bant-weight  champion.  There 
was  a  time,  though,  when  he  was  what  the 
world  is  pleased  to  call  over-sized.  In  writ 
ing  on  several  occasions,  and  always  enter 
tainingly  and  helpfully,  upon  the  subject  of 
the  methods  employed  by  him  to  reduce 
himself  to  his  current  proportions  I  hold 
that  he  had  the  right  idea  about  it. 

Getting  fat  is  a  fault;  except  when  caused 
by  the  disease  known  as  obesity,  it  is  a  bad 
habit.  Getting  thin  and  at  the  same  time 
retaining  one's  health  is  a  virtue.  Never 
does  the  reductionist  feel  quite  so  virtuous 
as  when  for  the  first  time,  perhaps  in  dec 
ades,  he  can  stand  straight  up  and  look 
straight  down  and  behold  the  tips  of  his 
toes.  His  virtue  is  all  the  more  pleasant  to 
him  because  it  recalls  a  reformation  on  his 


Extra!  Extra!         17 

part  and  because  it  has  called  for  self-de 
nial.  I  started  to  say  that  it  had  called  for 
mortification  of  the  flesh,  but  I  shan't.  De 
spite  the  contrary  opinions  of  the  early 
fathers  of  the  church,  I  hold  that  the  morti 
fication  of  the  flesh  is  really  based  upon  the 
flesh  itself,  where  there  is  too  much  of  it  for 
beauty  and  grace,  not  merely  upon  the 
process  employed  in  getting  rid  of  it. 

Ask  any  fat  man — or  better  still,  any  for 
merly  fat  man — if  I  am  not  correct.  But 
do  not  ask  a  fat  woman  unless,  as  in  the  case 
of  possible  fire  at  a  theater,  you  already 
have  looked  about  you  and  chosen  the  near 
est  exit.  Taken  as  a  sex,  women  are  more 
likely  to  be  touchy  upon  this  detail  where  it 
applies  to  themselves  than  men  are. 

I  have  a  notion  that  probably  the  late 
Lucrezia  Borgia  did  not  start  feeding  her 
house  guests  on  those  deep-dish  poison  pies 
with  which  her  name  historically  is  asso 
ciated  until  after  she  grew  sensitive  about 
the  way  folks  dropping  in  at  the  Borgia 
home  for  a  visit  were  sizing  up  her  propor- 


18         One  Third  Off 

tions  on  the  bias,  so  to  speak.  And  I  attribute 
the  development  of  the  less  pleasant  side 
of  Cleopatra's  disposition — keeping  asps 
around  the  house  and  stabbing  the  bearers 
of  unpleasant  tidings  with  daggers  and  feed 
ing  people  to  the  crocodiles  and  all  that 
sort  of  thing — to  the  period  when  she  found 
her  anklets  binding  uncomfortably  and 
along  toward  half  past  ten  o'clock  of  an 
evening  was  seized  by  a  well-nigh  uncon 
trollable  longing  to  excuse  herself  from  the 
company  and  run  upstairs  and  take  off  her 
jeweled  stomacher  and  things  and  slip  into 
something  loose. 

But  upon  this  subject  men  are  less  in 
clined  to  be  fussy,  and  by  the  same  token 
more  inclined,  on  having  accomplished  a 
cure,  to  take  a  justifiable  pride  in  it  and  to 
brag  publicly  about  it.  As  I  stated  a  mo 
ment  ago,  I  claim  Mr.  Blythe  viewed  the 
matter  in  a  proper  and  commendable  light 
when  he  took  pen  in  hand  to  describe  more 
or  less  at  length  his  reduction  processes.  So, 
too,  did  that  other  notable  of  the  literary 


"(H    BROAD.' 


Page  19 


Extra!    Extra!        21 

world,  Mr.  Vance  Thompson.  Mr.  Thomp 
son  would  be  the  last  one  to  deny  that  once 
upon  a  time  he  undeniably  was  large.  The 
first  time  I  ever  saw  him — it  was  in  Paris 
some  years  ago,  and  he  was  walking  away 
from  me  and  had  his  back  to  me  and  was 
wearing  a  box  coat — I  thought  for  a  mo 
ment  they  were  taking  a  tractor  across  town. 
All  that,  however,  belongs  to  the  past.  Just 
so  soon  as  Mr.  Thompson  had  worked  out  a 
system  of  dieting  and  by  personal  applica 
tion  had  proved  its  success  he  wrote  the  vol 
ume  Eat  and  Grow  Thin,  embodying  there 
in  his  experiences,  his  course  of  treatment 
and  his  advice  to  former  fellow  sufferers. 
So  you  see  in  saying  now  what  I  mean  to  say 
I  do  but  follow  in  the  mouth-prints  of  the 
famous. 

Besides,  when  I  got  fat  I  capitalized  my 
fatness  in  the  printed  word.  I  told  how  it 
felt  to  be  fat. 

I  described  how  natural  it  was  for  a  fat 
man  to  feel  like  the  Grand  Canon  before 


22         One  Third  Off 

dinner  and  like  the  Royal  Gorge  after 
wards. 

I  told  how,  if  he  wedged  himself  into  a 
telephone  booth  and  said,  "64  Broad,"  per 
sons  overhearing  him  were  not  sure  whether 
he  was  asking  Central  for  a  number  or  tell 
ing  a  tailor  what  his  waist  measurements 
were. 

I  told  how  deeply  it  distressed  him  as  he 
walked  along,  larding  the  earth  as  he  passed, 
to  hear  bystanders  making  ribald  comments 
about  the  inadvisability  of  trying  to  move 
bank  vaults  through  the  streets  in  the  day 
time.  And  now  that,  after  fifteen  years  of 
fatness,  I  am  getting  thin  again — glory  be! 
— wherein,  I  ask,  is  the  impropriety  in  fur 
nishing  the  particulars  for  publication;  the 
more  especially  since  my  own  tale,  I  fondly 
trust,  may  make  helpful  telling  for  some  of 
my  fellow  creatures?  When  you  can  offer  a 
boon  to  humanity  and  at  the  same  time  be 
paid  for  it  the  dual  advantage  is  not  to  be 
decried. 


Romping  Elfin  Twenties  23 


CHAPTER  TWO 


Those  Romping  Elfin  Twenties 


Romping  Elfin  Twenties  25 


CHAPTER  II 

Those  Romping  Elfin 
Twenties 

rhas  been  my  personal  observation, 
viewing  the  matter  at  close  range,  that 
nearly  always  fat,  like  old  age  or  a  thief 
in  the  dark,  steals  upon  one  unawares.  I 
take  my  own  case.  As  a  youngster  and  on 
through  my  teens  and  into  my  early  twen 
ties — ah,  those  romping  elfin  twenties! — I 
was,  in  outline,  what  might  be  termed 
dwindly,  not  to  say  slimmish.  Those  who 
have  known  me  in  my  latter  years  might  be 
loath  to  believe  it,  but  one  of  my  boyhood 
nick-names — I  had  several,  and  none  of 
them  was  complimentary  but  all  of  them 
were  graphic — was  Bonesy.  At  sixteen,  by 
striping  myself  in  alternate  whites  and 
blacks,  I  could  have  hired  out  for  a  sur 
veyor's  rod.  At  twenty-one  I  measured  six 


26         One  Third  Off 

feet  the  long  way,  and  if  only  mine  had 
been  a  hook  nose  I  should  have  cast  a 
shadow  like  a  shepherd's  crook. 

My  avocation  in  life  was  such  as  to  in 
duce  slenderness.  I  was  the  city  staff  of  a 
small-town  daily  paper,  and  what  with 
dodging  round  gathering  up  items  about 
people  to  write  for  the  paper  and  then  dodg 
ing  round  to  avoid  personal  contact  with  the 
people  I  had  written  the  items  about  for 
the  paper,  I  was  kept  pretty  constantly  upon 
the  go.  In  our  part  of  the  country  in  those 
days  the  leading  citizens  were  prone  to  take 
offense  at  some  of  the  things  that  were  said 
of  them  in  the  public  prints  and  given  to 
expressing  their  sense  of  annoyance  forcibly. 
When  a  high-spirited  Southern  gentleman, 
regarding  whom  something  of  a  disagree 
able  nature  had  appeared  in  the  news  col 
umns,  entered  the  editorial  sanctum  without 
knocking,  wearing  upon  his  crimsoned  face 
an  expression  of  forthright  irritation  and 
with  his' right  hand  stealing  back  under  his 
coat  &kirt,  it  was  time  for  the  offending  re- 


Romping  Elfin   Twenties  27 

porter  to  emulate  the  common  example  of 
the  native  white-throated  nut-hatch  and 
either  flit  thence  rapidly  or  hunt  a  hole. 

Since  prohibition  came  in  and  a  hiccup 
became  a  mark  of  affluence  instead  of  a 
social  error,  as  formerly,  and  a  loaded  flank 
is  a  sign  of  hospitality  rather  than  of  men 
ace,  things  may  have  changed.  I  am  speak 
ing,  though,  of  the  damper  early  nineties  in 
Kentucky,  when  a  sudden  motion  toward 
the  right  hip  pocket  was  a  threat  and  not  a 
promise,  as  at  present.  So,  what  with  first 
one  thing  and  then  another,  now  collecting 
the  news  of  the  community  and  now  avoid 
ing  the  customary  consequences,  I  did  a 
good  deal  of  running  about  hither  and  yon, 
and  kept  fit  and  spry  and  stripling-thin. 

Yet  I  ate  heartily  of  all  things  that  ap 
pealed  to  my  palate,  eating  at  least  two 
kinds  of  hot  bread  at  every  meal — down 
South  we  say  it  with  flours — and  using 
chewing  tobacco  for  the  salad  course,  as 
was  the  custom.  I  ate  copiously  at  and  be 
tween  meals  and  gained  not  a  whit 


Regarding  Liver- Eat  ing  29 


CHAPTER  THREE 


Regarding  Liver-Eating 
Catkins  and  Others 


Regarding  Liver-Eating  31 


CHAPTER  III 

Regarding  Liver-Eating 
Wat  kins  and  Others 

Ewas  after  I  had  moved  to  New  York 
ind  had  taken  a  desk  job  that  I  detected 
_nyself  in  the  act,  as  it  were,  of  plump 
ing  out.  Cognizant  of  the  fact,  as  I  was,  I 
nevertheless  took  no  curative  or  corrective 
measures  in  the  way  of  revising  my  diet.  I 
was  content  to  make  excuses  inwardly.  I 
said  to  myself  that  I  came  of  a  breed  whose 
members  in  their  mature  years  were  inclined 
to  broaden  noticeably.  I  said  to  myself 
that  I  was  not  getting  the  amount  of  exer 
cise  that  once  I  had;  that  my  occupation 
was  now  more  sedentary,  and  therefore  it 
stood  to  reason  that  I  should  take  on  a  little 
flesh  here  and  there  over  my  frame.  More 
over,  I  felt  good.  If  I  had  felt  any  better 
I  could  have  charged  admission.  My  ap- 


32         One  Third  Off 

petite  was  perfect,  my  digestion  magnificent, 
nay,  awe-inspiring. 

To  me  it  seemed  that  physically  I  was 
just  as  active  and  agile  as  I  had  been  in 
those  'prentice  years  of  my  professional 
career  when  the  ability  to  shift  quickly 
from  place  to  place  and  to  think  with  an 
ornithological  aptitude  were  conducive  to  a 
continuance  of  unimpaired  health  among 
young  reporters.  Anyhow — thus  I  to  myself 
in  the  same  strain,  continuing — anyhow,  I 
was  not  actually  getting  fat.  Nothing  so 
gross  as  that.  I  merely  was  attaining  to  a 
pleasant,  a  becoming  and  a  dignified  full 
ness  of  contour  as  I  neared  my  thirtieth 
birthday.  So  why  worry  about  what  was 
natural  and  normal  among  persons  of  my 
temperament,  and  having  my  hereditary 
impulses,  upon  attaining  a  given  age? 

I  am  convinced  that  men  who  are  getting 
fat  are  generally  like  that.  For  every  added 
pound  an  added  excuse,  for  each  multiply 
ing  inch  at  the  waistline  a  new  plea  in  abate 
ment  to  be  set  up  in  the  mind.  I  see  the 


Regarding  Liver- Eating  33 

truth  of  it  now.  When  you  start  getting  fat 
you  start  getting  fatuous.  With  the  indubit 
able  proof  of  his  infirmity  mounting  in 
superimposed  folds  of  tissues  before  his  very 
gaze,  with  the  rounded  evidence  presented 
right  there  in  front  of  him  where  he  can  rest 
his  elbows  on  it,  your  average  fattish  man 
nevertheless  refuses  to  acknowledge  the  vis 
ible  situation.  Vanity  blinds  his  one  eye, 
love  of  self-indulgence  blinds  the  other. 
Observe  now  how  I  speak  in  the  high  moral 
tone  of  a  reformed  offender,  which  is  the 
way  of  reformed  offenders  and  other  re 
formers  the  world  over.  We  are  always 
most  virtuous  in  retrospect,  as  the  fact  of  the 
crime  recedes.  Moreover,  he  who  has  not 
erred  has  but  little  to  gloat  over. 

There  are  two  sorts  of  evidence  upon 
which  many  judges  look  askance — that  sort 
of  evidence  which  is  circumstantial  and  that 
sort  which  purely  is  hearsay.  In  this  con 
nection,  and  departing  for  the  space  of  a 
paragraph  or  so  from  the  main  theme,  I 
am  reminded  of  the  incident  through  which 


34         One  Third  Off 

a  certain  picturesque  gentleman  of  the  early 
days  in  California  acquired  a  name  which 
he  was  destined  to  wear  forever  after,  and 
under  which  his  memory  is  still  affection 
ately  encysted  in  the  traditions  of  our  great 
Far  West.  I  refer  to  the  late  Liver-Eating 
Watkins.  Mr.  Watkins  entered  into  active 
life  and  passed  through  a  good  part  of  it 
bearing  the  unilluminative  and  common 
place  first  name  of  Elmer  or  Lemuel,  or 
perhaps  it  was  Jasper.  Just  which  one  of 
these  or  some  other  I  forgot  now,  but  no 
matter;  at  least  it  was  some  such.  One  eve 
ning  a  low-down  terra-cotta-colored  Piute 
swiped  two  of  Mr.  Watkins'  paint  ponies 
and  by  stealth,  under  cover  of  the  cloaking 
twilight,  went  away  with  them  into  the  far 
mysterious  spaces  of  the  purpling  sage. 

To  these  ponies  the  owner  was  deeply  at 
tached,  not  alone  on  account  of  the  intrinsic 
value,  but  for  sentimental  reasons  likewise. 
So  immediately  on  discovering  the  loss  the 
next  morning,  Mr.  Watkins  took  steps.  He 
saddled  a  third  pony  which  the  thief  had 


Regarding  Liver- Eating  35 

somehow  overlooked  in  the  haste  of  depart 
ure,  and  he  girded  on  him  both  cutlery  and 
shootlery,  and  he  mounted  and  soon  was  off 
and  away  across  the  desert  upon  the  trail  of 
the  vanished  malefactor.  Now  when  Mr. 
Watkins  fared  forth  thus  accoutered  it  was 
a  sign  he  was  not  out  for  his  health  or  any 
body  else's. 

Friends  and  well-wishers  volunteered  to 
accompany  him  upon  the  chase,  for  they 
foresaw  brisk  doings.  But  he  declined  their 
company.  Folklore,  descending  from  his 
generation  to  ours,  has  it  that  he  said  this 
was  his  own  business  and  he  preferred  han 
dling  it  alone  in  his  own  way.  He  did  add, 
however,  that  on  overtaking  the  fugitive  it 
was  his  intention,  as  an  earnest  or  token  of 
his  displeasure,  to  eat  that  Injun's  liver  raw. 
Some  versions  say  he  mentioned  liver  rare, 
but  the  commonly  accepted  legend  has  it 
that  the  word  used  was  raw.  With  this  he 
put  the  spur  to  his  steed's  flank  and  was  soon 
but  a  mere  moving  speck  in  the  distance. 

Now  there  was  never  offered  any  direct 


36         One  Third  Off 

proof  that  our  hero,  in  pursuance  of  his 
plan  for  teaching  the  Indian  a  lesson,  actu 
ally  did  do  with  regard  to  the  latter's  liver 
what  he  had  promised  the  bystanders  he 
would  do;  moreover,  touching  on  this  detail 
he  ever  thereafter  maintained  a  steadfast 
and  unbreakable  silence.  In  lieu  of  cor 
roborative  testimony  by  unbiased  witnesses 
as  to  the  act  itself,  we  have  only  these  two 
things  to  judge  by:  First,  that  when  Mr. 
Watkins  returned  in  the  dusk  of  the  same 
day  he  was  wearing  upon  his  face  a  well- 
fed,  not  to  say  satiated,  expression,  yet  had 
started  forth  that  morning  with  no  store  of 
provisions;  and  second,  that  on  being  found 
in  a  deceased  state  some  days  later,  the 
Piute,  who  when  last  previously  seen  had 
with  him  two  of  Mr.  Watkin's  pintos  and 
one  liver  of  his  own,  was  now  shy  all  three. 
By  these  facts  a  strong  presumptive  case 
having  been  made  out,  Mr.  Watkins  was 
thenceforth  known  not  as  Ezekiel  or  Eman- 
uel,  or  whatever  his  original  first  name  had 
been,  but  as  Liver-Eating,  or  among  friends 


Regarding  Liver- Eating  37 

by  the  affectionate  diminutive  of  Liv  for 
short. 

This  I  would  regard  as  a  typical  instance 
of  the  value  of  a  chain  of  good  circumstan 
tial  evidence,  with  no  essential  link  lacking. 
Direct  testimony  could  hardly  have  been 
more  satisfactory,  all  things  considered ;  and 
yet  direct  testimony  is  the  best  sort  there  is, 
in  the  law  courts  and  out.  On  the  other 
hand,  hearsay  evidence  is  viewed  legally 
and  often  by  the  layman  with  suspicion ;  in 
most  causes  of  action  being  barred  out  alto 
gether.  Nevertheless,  it  is  a  phase  of  the 
fattish  man's  perversity  that,  rejecting  the 
direct,  the  circumstantial  and  the  circum 
ferential  testimony  which  abounds  about 
him,  he  too  often  awaits  confirmation  of  his 
growing  suspicions  at  the  hands  of  outsiders 
and  bystanders  before  he  is  willing  openly 
to  admit  that  condition  of  fatness  which  for 
long  has  been  patent  to  the  most  casual  ob 
server. 

Women,  as  I  have  observed  them,  are 
even  more  disposed  to  avoid  confession  on 


38         One  Third  Off 

this  point.  A  woman  somehow  figures  that 
so  long  as  she  refuses  to  acknowledge  to  her 
self  or  any  other  interested  party  that  she 
has  progressed  out  of  the  ranks  of  the 
plumpened  into  the  congested  and  overflow 
ing  realms  of  the  avowedly  obese,  why,  for 
just  so  long  may  she  keep  the  rest  of  the 
world  in  ignorance  too.  I  take  it,  the  ostrich 
which  first  set  the  example  to  all  the  other 
ostriches  of  trying  to  avoid  detection  by  the 
enemy  through  the  simple  expedient  of 
sticking  its  head  in  the  sand  was  a  lady  os 
trich,  and  moreover  one  typical  of  her  sex. 
But  men  are  bad  enough.  I  know  that  I 
was. 


/  Become  the  Champion  39 


CHAPTER  FOUR 


Become  the  Panting  Champion 


/  Become  the  Champion  41 


CHAPTER  IV 

/  Become  The  Panting 
Champion 

MONTH  after  month,  through  the 
cycle  of  the  revolving  seasons,  I 
went  along  deceiving  myself,  even 
though  I  deceived  none  else,  coining  new 
pleas  in  extenuation  or  outright  contradic 
tions  to  meet  each  new-arising  element  of 
confirmatory  proof  to  a  state  of  case  which 
no  unprejudiced  person  could  fail  to 
acknowledge.  The  original  discoverer  of 
the  alibi  was  a  fat  man;  indeed,  it  was 
named  for  him — Ali  Bi-Ben  Adhem,  he 
was,  a  friend  and  companion  of  the  Prophet, 
and  so  large  that,  going  into  Mecca,  he  had 
to  ride  on  two  camels.  This  fact  is  histori 
cally  authenticated.  I  looked  it  up. 

In  the  fall  of  the  year,  when  I  brought 
last  winter's  heavy  suit  out  of  the  clothes- 


42         One  Third  Off 

press  and  found  it  now  to  hug  o'ersnugly 
for  comfort,  I  cajoled  my  saner  self  into  ac 
cepting  a  most  transparent  lie — my  figure 
had  not  materially  altered  through  the  in 
tervening  spring  and  summer;  it  was  only 
that  the  garments,  being  fashioned  of  a 
shoddy  material,  had  shrunk.  I  owned  a 
dress  suit  which  had  been  form  fitting,  'tis 
true,  but  none  too  close  a  fit  upon  me.  I  had 
owned  it  for  years;  I  looked  forward  to 
owning  and  using  it  for  years  to  come.  I 
laid  it  aside  for  a  period  during  an  abate 
ment  in  formal  social  activities ;  then  bring 
ing  it  forth  from  its  camphor-ball  nest  for  a 
special  occasion  I  found  I  could  scarce 
force  my  way  down  into  the  trousers,  and 
that  the  waistcoat  buttons  could  not  be  made 
to  meet  the  buttonholes,  and  that  the  coat, 
after  finally  I  had  struggled  into  it,  bound 
me  as  with  chains  by  reason  of  the  pull  at 
armpits  and  between  the  shoulders.  I  could 
not  get  my  arms  down  to  my  sides  at  all.  I 
could  only  use  them  flapper  fashion. 


/  Become  the  Champion  43 

I  felt  like  a  penguin.  I  imagine  I  looked 
a  good  bit  like  one  too. 

But  I  did  not  blame  myself,  who  was  the 
real  criminal,  or  the  grocer  who  was  ac 
cessory  before  the  fact.  I  put  the  fault  on 
the  tailor,  who  was  innocent.  Each  time  I 
had  to  let  my  belt  buckle  out  for  another 
notch  in  order  that  I  might  breathe  I  diag 
nosed  the  trouble  as  a  touch  of  what  might 
be  called  Harlem  flatulency.  We  lived  in 
a  flat  then — a  nonelevator  flat — and  I  pre 
tended  that  climbing  three  flights  of  steep 
stairs  was  what  developed  my  abdominal 
muscles  and  at  the  same  time  made  me  short 
of  wind. 

I  coined  a  new  excuse  after  we  had  moved 
to  a  suburb  back  of  Yonkers.  Frequently  I 
had  to  run  to  catch  the  5  107  accommodation, 
because  if  I  missed  it  I  might  have  to  wait 
for  the  7:05,  which  was  no  accommodation. 
I  would  go  jamming  my  way  at  top  speed 
toward  the  train  gate  and  on  into  the  train 
shed,  and  when  I  reached  my  car  I  would 
be  'scaping  so  emphatically  that  the  locomo- 


44         One  Third  Off 

tive  on  up  ahead  would  grow  jealous  and 
probably  felt  as  though  it  might  just  as  well 
give  up  trying  to  compete  in  volume  of 
sound  output  with  a  real  contender.  But  I 
was  agile  enough  for  all  purposes  and  as 
brisk  as  any  upon  my  feet.  Therein  I  found 
my  consolation. 

Among  all  my  fellow  members  of  the 
younger  Grand  Central  Station  set  there  was 
scarce  a  one  who  could  start  with  me  at 
scratch  and  beat  me  to  a  train  just  pulling 
out  of  the  shed ;  and  even  though  he  might 
have  bested  me  at  sprinting,  I  had  him 
whipped  to  a  souffle  at  panting.  In  a  hun 
dred-yard  dash  I  could  spot  anyone  of  my 
juniors  a  dozen  pairs  of  pants  and  win  out 
handily.  I  was  the  acknowledged  all- 
weights  panting  champion  of  the  Putnam 
divsion. 

If  there  had  been  ten  or  twelve  of  my 
neighbors  as  good  at  this  as  I  was  we  might 
have  organized  and  drilled  together  and 
worked  out  a  class  cheer  for  the  Putnam 
Division  Country  Club — three  deep  long 


TO  OBSERVE   MR.   BRYAN   BREAKFASTING  IS   A  SIGHT   WORTH    SEEING. 

Page   45 


/  Become  the  Champion  47 

pants,  say,  followed  by  nine  sharp  short 
pants  or  pantlets.  But  I  would  have  been 
elected  pants  leader  without  a  struggle.  My 
merits  were  too  self-evident  for  a  contest. 

But  did  I  attribute  my  supremacy  in  this 
regard  to  accumulating  and  thickening  lay 
ers  of  tissue  in  the  general  vicinity  of  my 
midriff?  I  did  not!  No,  sir,  because  I  was 
fat — indubitably,  uncontrovertibly  and  be 
yond  the  peradventure  of  a  doubt,  fat — I 
kept  on  playing  the  fat  man's  game  of  men 
tal  solitaire.  I  inwardly  insisted,  and  I 
think  partly  believed,  that  my  lung  power 
was  too  great  for  the  capacity  of  my  throat 
opening,  hence  pants.  I  cast  a  pitying  eye 
at  other  men,  deep  of  girth  and  purple 
of  face,  waddling  down  the  platform,  and 
as  I  scudded  on  past  them  I  would  say  to 
myself  that  after  all  there  was  a  tremendous 
difference  between  being  obese  and  being 
merely  well  fleshed  out.  The  real  reason 
of  course  was  that  my  legs  had  remained 
reasonably  firm  and  trim  while  the  torso 
was  inflating.  For  I  was  one  who  got  fat  not 


48         One  Third  Off 

all  over  at  once  but  in  favored  localities. 
And  I  was  even  as  the  husband  is  whose 
wife  is  being  gossiped  about — the  last  per 
son  in  the  neighborhood  to  hear  the  news. 

As  though  it  were  yesterday  I  remember 
the  day  and  the  place  and  the  attendant 
circumstances  when  and  where  awakening 
was  forced  upon  me.  Two  of  us  went  to 
Canada  on  a  hunting  trip.  The  last  lap  of 
the  journey  into  camp  called  for  a  fifteen- 
mile  horseback  ride  through  the  woods. 
The  native  who  was  to  be  our  chief  guide 
met  us  with  our  mounts  at  a  way  station  far 
up  in  the  interior  of  Quebec.  He  knew  my 
friend — had  guided  him  for  two  seasons 
before;  but  I  was  a  stranger  in  those  parts. 
Now  until  that  hour  it  had  never  occurred 
to  me  that  I  was  anywhere  nearly  so  bulk- 
some  as  this  friend  of  mine  was.  For  he  in 
dubitably  was  a  person  of  vast  displacement 
and  augmented  gross  total  tonnage;  and  in 
that  state  of  blindness  which  denies  us  the 
gift  to  see  ourselves  as  others  see  us  I  never 
had  reckoned  myself  to  be  in  his  class,  avoir- 


I  Become  the  Champion  49 

dupoisefully  speaking.  But  as  we  lined  up 
two  abreast  alongside  the  station,  with  our 
camp  duffel  piled  about  us,  the  keen-eyed 
guide,  standing  slightly  to  one  side,  con 
sidered  our  abdominal  profiles,  and  the  look 
he  cast  at  my  companion  said  as  plainly  as 
words,  "Well,  I  see  youVe  brought  a  spare 
set  along  with  you  in  case  of  a  puncture." 

But  he  did  not  come  right  out  and  say  a 
thing  so  utterly  tactless.  What  he  did  say, 
in  a  worried  tone,  was  that  he  was  sorry 
now  he  had  not  fetched  along  a  much  more 
powerful  horse  for  me  to  ride  on.  He  had  a 
good  big  chunky  work  animal,  not  fast  but 
very  strong  in  the  back,  he  said,  which 
would  have  answered  my  purposes  first  rate. 

I  experienced  another  disillusioning  jolt. 
Could  it  be  that  this  practiced  woodsman's 
eye  actually  appraised  me  as  being  as  heavy 
as  my  mate,  or  even  heavier?  Surely  he 
must  be  wrong  in  his  judgments.  The  point 
was  that  I  woefully  was  wrong  in  mine. 
How  true  it  is  that  we  who  would  pluck 
the  mote  from  behind  a  fellow  being's  waist- 


50         One  Third  Off 

coat  so  rarely  take  note  of  the  beam  which 
we  have  swallowed  crosswise! 

Even  so,  a  great  light  was  beginning  to 
percolate  to  my  innermost  consciousness. 
A  grave  doubt  pestered  me  through  our 
days  of  camping  there  in  the  autumnal  wil 
derness.  When  we  had  emerged  from  the 
woods  and  had  reached  Montreal  on  the 
homeward  trip  I  enticed  my  friend  upon  a 
penny-in-the-slot  weighing  machine  in  the 
Montreal  station  and  I  observed  what  he 
weighed;  and  then  when  he  stepped  aside 
I  unostentatiously  weighed  myself,  and  in 
the  box  score  credited  myself  with  a  pro 
found  shock;  also  with  an  error,  which 
should  have  been  entered  up  a  long  time 
before  that. 

Approximately,  we  were  of  the  same 
height  and  in  bone  structure  not  greatly  un 
like.  I  had  figured  that  daily  tramping 
after  game  should  have  taken  a  few  folds  of 
superfluous  flesh  off  my  frame,  and  so,  no 
doubt,  it  had  done.  Yet  I  had  pulled  the 
spindle  around  the  face  of  the  dial  to  a 


/  Become  the  Champion  51 

point  which  recorded  for  me  a  total  of  six 
teen  pounds  and  odd  ounces  more  than  his 
penny  had  registered  for  him. 

If  he  was  fat,  unmistakably  and  conclu 
sively  fat— and  he  was — what  then  was  I? 
In  Troy  weight — Troy  where  the  hay  scales 
come  from — the  answer  was  written.  I  was 
fat  as  fat,  or  else  the  machine  had  lied. 
And  as  between  me  and  that  machine  I 
could  pick  the  liar  at  the  first  pick. 


Acquiring  Snappy  Pores  53 


CHAPTER  FIFE 


On  Acquiring  Some  Snappy  Pores 


Acquiring  Snappy  Pores  55 


CHAPTER  V 


On  Acquiring  Some  Snappy 
Pores 


f  "^HAT  night  on  the  sleeper  a  splen 
did  resolution  sprouted  within  me. 
JL  Next  morning  when  we  arrived 
home  it  was  ready  and  ripe  for  plucking.  I 
would  trim  myself  down  to  more  lithesome 
proportions  and  I  would  start  the  job  right 
away.  It  did  not  occur  to  me  that  cutting 
down  my  daily  consumption  of  provender 
might  prove  helpful  to  the  success  of  the 
proposed  undertaking.  Or  if  it  did  occur 
to  me  I  put  the  idea  sternly  from  me,  for  I 
was  by  way  of  being  a  robust  trencherman. 
I  had  joyed  in  the  pleasures  of  the  table,  and 
I  had  written  copiously  of  those  joys,  and 
I  now  declined  to  recant  of  my  faith  or  to 
abate  my  indulgences. 


56         One  Third  Off 

All  this  talk  which  I  had  heard  about 
balanced  rations  went  in  at  one  ear  and 
out  at  the  other.  I  knew  what  a  balanced 
ration  was.  I  stowed  one  aboard  three  times 
daily — at  morn,  again  at  noon  and  once 
more  at  nightfall.  A  balanced  ration  was 
one  which,  being  eaten,  did  not  pull  you 
over  on  your  face;  one  which  you  could 
poise  properly  if  only  you  leaned  well  back, 
upon  arising  from  the  table,  and  placed  the 
two  hands,  with  a  gentle  lifting  motion,  just 
under  the  overhang  of  the  main  cargo 
hold. 

Surely  there  must  be  some  way  of  achiev 
ing  the  desired  result  other  than  by  follow 
ing  dieting  devices.  There  was — exercising 
was  the  answer.  I  would  exercise  and  so 
become  a  veritable  faun. 

Now,  so  far  as  I  recalled,  I  had  never 
taken  any  indoor  exercise  excepting  once  in 
a  while  to  knock  on  wood.  I  abhorred  the 
thought  of  ritualistic  bedroom  calisthenics 
such  as  were  recommended  by  divers  health 
experts.  Climbing  out  of  a  warm  bed  and 


Acquiring  Snappy  Pores  57 

standing  out  in  the  middle  of  a  cold  room 
and  giving  an  imitation  of  a  demoniac  sema 
phore  had  never  appealed  to  me  as  a  fas 
cinating  divertisement  for  a  grown  man. 
As  I  think  I  may  have  remarked  once  be 
fore,  lying  at  full  length  on  one's  back  on 
the  floor  immediately  upon  awakening  of  a 
morning  and  raising  the  legs  to  full  length 
twenty  times  struck  me  as  a  performance 
lacking  in  dignity  and  utterly  futile. 

Besides,  what  sort  of  a  way  was  that  to 
greet  the  dewy  morn? 

So  as  an  alternative  I  decided  to  enroll 
for  membership  at  a  gymnasium  where  I 
could  have  company  at  my  exercising  and 
make  a  sport  of  what  otherwise  would  be  in 
the  nature  of  a  punishment.  This  I  did. 
With  a  group  of  fellow  inmates  for  my  team 
mates,  I  tossed  the  medicine  ball  about. 
My  score  at  this  was  perfect;  that  is  to  say, 
sometimes  when  it  came  my  turn  to  catch  I 
missed  the  ball,  but  the  ball  never  once 
missed  me.  Always  it  landed  on  some  ten 
der  portion  of  my  anatomy,  so  that  my  aver- 


58         One  Third  Off 

age,   written   in   black-and-blue   spots,    re 
mained  an  even  1000. 

Daily  I  cantered  around  and  around  and 
around  a  running  track  until  my  breathing 
was  such  probably  as  to  cause  people  pass 
ing  the  building  to  think  that  the  West  Side 
Y.  M.  C.  A.  was  harboring  a  pet  porpoise 
inside.  Once,  doing  this,  I  caught  a  glimpse 
of  my  own  form  in  a  looking-glass  which  for 
some  reason  was  affixed  to  one  of  the  pillars 
flanking  the  oval.  A  looking-glass  properly 
did  not  belong  there;  distinctly  it  was  out 
of  place  and  could  serve  no  worthy  purpose. 
Very  few  of  the  sights  presented  in  a  gym 
which  largely  is  patronized  by  city-bred  fat 
men  are  deserving  to  be  mirrored  in  a  glass. 
They  are  not  such  visions  as  one  would 
care  to  store  in  fond  memory's  album.  Be 
that  as  it  may,  here  was  this  mirror,  and 
swinging  down  the  course  suddenly  I  be 
held  myself  in  it.  Clad  in  a  chastely  simple 
one-piece  garment,  with  my  face  all  a  blis 
tered  crimson  and  my  fingers  interlaced  to 
gether  about  where  the  third  button  of  the 


Acquiring  Snappy  Pores  59 

waistcoat,  counting  from  the  bottom  up, 
would  have  been  had  I  been  wearing  any 
waistcoat,  I  reminded  myself  of  a  badly 
scorched  citizen  escaping  in  a  scantily 
dressed  condition  from  a  burning  home 
stead  bringing  with  him  the  chief  family 
treasure  clasped  in  his  arms.  He  had  saved 
the  pianola! 

From  the  running  track  or  the  medicine- 
ball  court  I  would  repair  to  the  steam  room 
and  simmer  pleasantly  in  a  temperature  of 
240  degrees  Fahrenheit — I  am  sure  I  have 
the  figures  right — until  all  I  needed  before 
being  served  was  to  have  the  gravy  slightly 
thickened  with  flour  and  a  dash  of  water 
cress  added  here  and  there.  Having  re 
mained  in  the  steam  cabinet  until  quite 
done,  I  next  would  jump  into  the  swim 
ming  pool,  which  concluded  the  afternoon's 
entertainment. 

Jumping  into  the  cool  water  of  the  pool 
was  supposed  to  reseal  the  pores  which  the 
treatment  in  the  hot  room  had  caused  to 
open.  In  the  best  gymnasium  circles  it  is 


60         One  Third  Off 

held  to  be  a  fine  thing  to  have  these  edu 
cated  pores,  but  I  am  sure  it  can  be  over 
done,  and  personally  I  cannot  say  that  I  par 
ticularly  enjoyed  it.  I  kept  it  up  largely  for 
their  sake.  They  became  highly  trained, 
but  developed  temperament.  They  were 
apt  to  get  the  signals  mixed  and  open  un 
expectedly  on  the  street,  resulting  in  bad 
colds  for  me. 

For  six  weeks,  on  every  week  day  from 
three  to  five  P.  M.  I  maintained  this 
schedule  religiously — at  least  I  used  a  good 
many  religious  words  while  so  engaged — 
and  then  I  went  on  the  scales  to  find  out 
what  progress  I  had  made  toward  attaining 
the  desired  result.  I  had  kept  off  the  scales 
until  then  because  I  was  saving  up,  as  it 
were,  to  give  myself  a  nice  jolly  surprise 
party. 

So  I  weighed.  And  I  had  picked  up  nine 
pounds  and  a  half!  That  was  what  I  had 
gained  for  all  my  sufferings  and  all  my 
exertions — that,  along  with  a  set  of  snappy 
but  emotional  pores  and  a  personal  knowl- 


Acquiring  Snappy  Pores  61 

edge  of  how  a  New  England  boiled  dinner 
feels  just  before  it  comes  on  the  table. 

"This,"  I  said  bitterly  to  myself— "this 
is  sheer  f oolhardiness !  Keep  this  up  for  six 
weeks  more  and  I'll  find  myself  fallen  away 
to  a  perfect  three-ton  truck.  Keep  it  up  for 
three  months  and  I'll  be  ready  to  rent  myself 
out  to  the  aquarium  as  a  suitable  playmate 
for  the  leviathan  in  the  main  tank.  I  shall 
stop  this  idiocy  before  it  begins  making  me 
seasick  merely  to  look  down  at  myself  as  I 
walk.  I  may  slosh  about  and  billow  some 
what,  but  I  positively  decline  to  heave  up 
and  down.  I  refuse  to  be  known  as  the 
human  tidal  wave,  with  women  and  children 
being  hurriedly  removed  to  a  place  of  safety 
at  my  approach.  Right  here  and  now  is 
where  I  quit  qualifying  for  the  inundation 
stakes!" 

Which  accordingly  I  did.  What  I  did 
not  realize  was  that  the  unwonted  exercise 
gave  me  such  a  magnificent  appetite  that, 
after  a  session  at  the  gymnasium,  I  ate 
about  three  times  as  much  as  I  usually  did 


62         One  Third  Off 

at  dinner — and,  mark  you,  I  never  had 
been  one  with  the  appetite,  as  the  saying 
goes,  of  a  bird,  to  peck  at  some  Hartz 
Mountain  roller's  prepared  food  and  wipe 
the  stray  rape  seed  off  my  nose  on  a  cuttle 
fish  bone  and  then  fly  up  on  the  perch  and 
tuck  the  head  under  the  wing  and  call  it 
a  meal.  I  had  ever  been  what  might  be 
termed  a  sincere  feeder.  So,  never  associat 
ing  the  question  of  diet  with  the  problem  of 
attaining  physical  slightness,  I  swung  back 
again  into  my  old  mode  of  life  with  the 
resigned  conviction  that  since  destiny  had 
chosen  me  to  be  fat  there  was  nothing  for 
me  to  do  in  the  premises  excepting  to  go 
right  on  to  the  end  of  my  mortal  chapter 
being  fat,  fatter  and  perhaps  fattest.  I'd 
just  make  the  best  of  it. 

And  Fd  use  care  about  crossing  a  county 
bridge  at  any  gait  faster  than  a  walk. 

Now  this  continued  for  years  and  years, 
and  then  here  a  few  months  ago  something 
else  happened.  And  on  top  of  that  some 
thing  else — to  wit:  The  Great  Reduction. 

Of  the  Great  Reduction  more  anon. 


More  Anon  63 


CHAPTER  SIX 


More  Anon 


More  Anon  65 

CHAPTER  VI 

More  Anon 

WELL,  I  made  up  my  mind,  having 
tried  violent  exercise  in  the  gym 
nasium,  coupled  with  violent  lan 
guage  in  the  steam  room,  and  having  found 
neither  or  both  had  been  of  the  least  avail  in 
trimming  down  my  proportions,  but  on  the 
contrary  had  augmented  them  to  the  extent 
of  nearly  ten  pounds,  live  weight,  that  I 
would  let  well  enough  alone.  If  'twere  my 
ordained  fate  to  be  fat — why,  then  so  be  it; 
I'd  be  fatly  fatalistic  and  go  on  through  life 
undulating  and  rippling.  If  an  all-wise 
Providence  meant  to  call  me  to  the  estate  of 
being  the  bulkiest  writing  man  using  the 
English  language  for  a  vehicle,  then  let  Hil- 
aire  Belloc  look  to  his  laurels  and  Gilbert 
K.  Chesterton  to  his  unholsterings.  There 


66         One  Third  Off 

was  one   consolation:  Thank  heavens  the 
championship  would  remain  in  America! 

The  years  go  marching  by  in  ordered  pro 
cessional.  A  great  war  bursts  and  for  a 
space  endures.  In  our  own  land  prohibition 
is  nationally  enacted  and  women's  suffrage 
comes  to  be,  and  Irving  Berlin,  reading  the 
signs  of  the  times,  decides  to  write  The  Blue 
Laws  Blues.  Fashions  of  thought  change; 
other  fashions,  also.  A  girl  who  was  born 
without  hips  or  eyebrows  and  who  in  child 
hood  was  regarded  as  a  freak,  now  finds  her 
self,  at  the  age  of  eighteen,  exactly  in  the 
mode,  thus  proving  that  all  things  come  to 
those  who  wait.  Czecho-Slovakia  is  dis 
covered.  The  American  forces  spent  three 
days  taking  Chateau-Thierry  and  three 
years  trying  to  learn  to  pronounce  it.  Ire 
land  undertakes  to  settle  her  ancient  prob 
lem  on  the  basis  of  self-extermination.  Sev 
eral  rich  retail  profiteers  die,  the  approval 
being  hearty  and  general,  and  on  arriving 
at  heaven  experience  great  difficulty  in  pass 
ing  through  the  Needle's  Eye,  or  trades- 


More  Anon  67 

men's  entrance.  Somebody  tells  Henry 
Ford  about  what  some  high  priests  did  in 
Jerusalem  nearly  two  thousand  years  ago 
and  in  the  first  flush  of  his  startled  indigna 
tion  he  becomes  violently  anti-Semitic. 
General  Pershing  returns  from  the  battle 
fields  of  Europe  universally  acclaimed  a 
model  of  military  efficiency  and  wearing 
so  many  medals  that  alongside  him  John 
Philip  Sousa,  by  contrast,  looks  absolutely 
nude.  His  friends  project  him  into  the  polit 
ical  arena  and  the  result  is  summed  in  a 
phrase — "Lafayette,  he  ain't  there!"  Un 
availing  efforts  are  made  by  a  rebellious 
and  unreconciled  few  of  us  to  find  a  presi 
dential  candidate  willing  to  run  on  a  plat 
form  of  but  four  planks,  namely:  Wines, 
ales,  liquors  and  cigars.  Harding  wins, 
Scattering  second;  Cox  also  ran:  slogan: 
"He  Kept  Us  Out  of  McAdoo."  Manhat 
tan  Island,  from  whence  the  rest  of  the 
country  derives  its  panics,  its  jazz  tremblors 
and  its  girl  shows,  develops  a  severe  sink 
ing  sensation  in  the  pit  of  its  financial  stom- 


68         One  Third  Off 

ach,  accompanied  by  acute  darting  pains  at 
the  juncture  of  Broad  and  Wall.  This  is  the 
way  Thomas  Carlyle  used  to  start  off  a  new 
chapter,  and  I  like  it.  It  denotes  erudition. 
Ziegfeld  builds  a  new  Follies  show  around 
twelve  pairs  of  winsome  knee  joints.  North 
Dakota  blows  down  the  Nonpartisan 
League  and  discovers  that  darned  thing  was 
loaded  in  both  barrels.  The  Prussians  are 
pained  to  note  that  for  some  reason  or  other 
a  number  of  people  seem  to  harbor  a  grudge 
against  them.  Nine  thousand  Kentucky 
mint  patches  are  plowed  under  and  the  sites 
sown  with  rosemary;  that's  for  remem 
brance.  In  New  York  plans  are  under 
taken  for  construing  the  Eighteenth  Amend 
ment  along  the  lines  of  the  selective  draft, 
upon  the  theory  that  booze  is  a  bad  thing 
for  some  people  and  much  too  good  for 
many  of  the  others.  The  word  "intrigued" 
creeps  into  our  language  and  becomes  com 
mon  property,  but  the  fiction  writers  saw  it 
first.  A  business  men's  cabinet,  composed 
almost  exclusively  of  politicians,  succeeds  a 


More  Anon  69 

business  men's  cabinet  composed  almost  ex 
clusively  of  politicians.  In  order  to  hurry 
along  the  payment  of  Installment  One  of  the 
Indemnity  France  whistles  up  the  reserves 
and  that  chore  is  chored.  Pessimists,  in 
cluding  many  of  the  old-line  Democrats, 
practically  all  the  maltsters,  and  Aunt 
Emma  Goldman,  are  filled  with  a  dismal 
conviction  that  creation  has  gone  plum'  to 
perdition  in  a  hand  basket.  Those  more 
optimistically  inclined  look  upon  the 
brighter  side  of  things  and  distill  consola 
tion  from  the  thought  that  nothing  is  so  bad 
but  what  it  might  have  been  worse — 
Trotzky  might  have  been  born  twins. 
Great  Britain  has  her  post-war  in 
dustrial  crisis,  Serial  Number  24.  The 
Sinn  Fein  enlarges  the  British  national  an 
them  to  read  God  Save  the  King  Till  We 
Can  Get  at  Him!  By  a  strict  party  vote 
Congress  decides  the  share  in  the  victory 
achieved  by  the  A.  E.  F.  was  overwhelming 
ly  Republican,  but  that  the  airship  program 
went  heavily  Democratic.  Popular  dis- 


70         One  Third  Off 

trust  of  home-brew  recipes  assumes  a  nation 
wide  phase.  This  brings  us  up  to  the  early 
spring  of  this  year  of  grace,  1921,  which 
is  what  I  have  been  aiming  for  all  through 
this  paragraph. 

Quite  without  warning,  I  discovered 
along  about  the  first  of  March  that  some 
thing  ailed  me ;  something  was  rocking  the 
boat.  About  my  heart  there  was  a  sense  of 
pressure,  so  it  seemed  to  me,  or  else  my 
imagination  was  at  fault.  Mentally,  I 
found  myself — well,  for  lack  of  a  better 
word  to  express  it — logy.  Otherwise,  in  all 
physical  regards,  I  felt  as  brisk  and  peart 
as  ever  I  have,  despite  the  circumstance  of 
having  reached  the  age  when  a  great  many 
of  us  are  confronted  by  the  distressing  dis 
covery  that  we  are  rapidly  getting  no 
younger. 

Now  when  a  man  who  has  always  enjoyed 
such  outrageously  perfect  health  as  it  has 
been  my  good  fortune  to  enjoy  takes  note 
that  certain  nagging  manifestations  are  per 
sisting  within  him  it  is  his  duty,  or  least  it 


More  Anon  71 

should  be  his  duty,  to  try  to  find  out  the  un 
derlying  cause  of  whatever  it  is  that  dis 
tresses  him  and  correct  the  trouble  before 
it  becomes  chronic. 

I  did  not  get  frightened — I  trust  I  am 
not  a  self-alarmist — but  I  did  get  worried. 
I  made  up  my  mind  that  I  would  not  wait, 
as  those  who  approach  middle  age  so  often 
do,  for  the  medical  examiner  of  an  insurance 
company  to  scare  me  into  sudden  conniption 
fits.  But  I  also  made  up  my  mind  that  I 
would  find  out  what  radically  was  wrong 
with  me,  if  anything,  and  endeavor  to  mas 
ter  it  while  the  mastering  was  good. 

This,  though,  was  after  I  had  harked 
back  to  the  days  of  my  adolescence.  I  was 
born  down  on  the  northern  edge  of  the 
southern  range  of  the  North  American  ma 
laria  belt;  and  when  I  was  growing  up,  if 
one  seemed  intellectually  torpid  or  became 
filled  with  an  overpowering  bodily  languor, 
the  indisposition  always  was  diagnosed  off 
hand  as  a  touch  of  malaria.  Accordingly, 
the  victim,  taking  his  own  advice  or  an- 


72         One  Third  Off 

other's,  jolted  his  liver  with  calomel  until 
the  poor  thing  flinched  every  time  a  strange 
pill  was  seen  approaching  it,  and  then  he 
rounded  out  the  course  of  treatment  with  all 
the  quinine  the  traffic  would  stand.  Recall 
ing  these  early  campaigns,  I  borrowed  of 
their  strategy  for  use  against  my  present 
symptoms — if  symptoms  they  were.  I  took 
quinine  until  my  ears  rang  so  that  persons 
passing  me  on  the  public  highway  would 
halt  to  listen  to  the  chimes.  My  head  was 
filled  with  myterious  muffled  rumblings. 
It  was  like  living  in  a  haunted  house  and 
being  one  at  the  same  time. 


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CHAPTER  SE7EN 


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CHAPTER  VII 

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IT  required  all  of  two  weeks  of  experi 
menting  with  my  interior  to  convince 
me  that  whatever  it  might  be  that  an 
noyed  me,  it  surely  was  not  a  thing  which 
an    intensive    bombardment    of    the    liver 
would  cure.    The  liver  has  a  low  visibility 
but  is  easy  to  hit. 

I  had  the  aversion  to  seeking  pro 
fessional  guidance  for  the  curing  of  a  pre 
sumably  minor  disorder  that  most  robust 
male  adults  have.  In  personal  tribute  I 
may  add  that  I  have  never  been  hypochon 
driac  in  any  possible  respect  However,  to 
ward  the  end  of  those  three  weeks  I  formed 
the  decision  that  I  would  go  to  see  a  doctor 
or  so.  But  I  would  sneak  up  on  these  gentle 
men,  so  to  speak.  I  would  call  upon  them 
in  the  role  of  a  friend  rather  than  avowedly 


76         One  Third  Off 

as  a  prospective  patient,  and  take  them  into 
my  confidence,  as  it  were,  by  degrees. 
Somewhere  in  the  back  part  of  my  brain  I 
nursed  a  persistent  fear  that  my  complaints 
might  be  diagnosed  as  symptoms  of  that 
incurable  malady  known  as  being  forty-four 
years  old,  going  on  forty-five.  And  I  knew 
that  much  already  without  paying  a  physi 
cian  twenty-five  dollars  for  telling  me  so  the 
first  time  and  ten  dollars  for  each  time  he 
told  it  to  me  over  again. 

Rather  shamefacedly,  with  a  well-simu 
lated  air  of  casualness,  I  dropped  in  upon  a 
physician  who  is  a  friend  of  mine  and  in 
whose  judgment  I  have  confidence;  and 
then,  after  a  two-day  interval,  I  went  to  see 
a  second  physician  of  my  acquaintance  who, 
I  believe,  also  thoroughly  knows  his  trade. 
With  both  men  I  followed  the  same  tactics 
— roundabout  chatting  on  the  topic  of  this 
or  that,  and  finally  an  honest  confession  as 
to  the  real  purpose  of  my  visit.  In  both  in 
stances  the  results  were  practically  identical. 
Each  man  manifested  an  almost  morbid  cu- 


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riosity  touching  on  my  personal  habits  and 
bodily  idiosyncrasies.  Each  asked  me  a  lot 
of  questions.  Each  went  at  me  with  X-ray 
machines  and  blood  tests  and  chemical 
analysissies — if  there  isn't  any  such  word  I 
claim  there  should  be — until  my  being  was 
practically  an  open  book  to  him  and  I  had 
no  secrets  left  at  all. 

And  the  upshot  of  all  this  was  that  each 
of  them  told  me  that  though  organically  I 
was  as  sound  as  a  nut — in  fact  much  sounder 
than  some  of  the  nuts  they  knew  profession 
ally — I  was  carrying  an  overload  of  avoir 
dupois  about  with  me.  In  other  words,  I 
was  too  fat  for  my  own  good.  I  was  eating 
too  much  sweet  stuff  and  entirely  too  much 
starch — especially  starch.  They  agreed  on 
this  point  emphatically.  As  well  as  I  could 
gather,  I  was  subjecting  my  interior  to  that 
highly  shellacked  gloss  which  is  peculiar  to 
the  bosom  of  the  old-fashioned  full-dress  or 
burying  shirt  upon  its  return  from  the  steam 
laundry,  when  what  my  system  really  called 
for  was  the  dull  domestic  finish. 


One  Third  Off 


"Well,  doc,"  I  said  upon  hearing  this  for 
the  second  time  in  language  which  already 
had  a  familiar  sound — "well,  all  that  you 
say  being  true,  what  then?" 

"For  one  thing,  more  exercise." 
"But  I  take  plenty  of  exercise  now." 
"For  example,  what?" 
"For  example,  golf." 
"How  often  do  you  play  golf?" 
"Well,  not  so  very  often,  as  the  real  golf- 
bug  or  caddie's  worm  would  measure  the 
diing — say,  on  an  average  of  once  a  week  in 
the  golfing  season.     But  I   take  so  many 
swings  at  the  ball  before  hitting  it  that  I  fig 
ure  I  get  more  exercise  out  of  the  game  than 
do  those  who  play  oftener  but  take  only 
about  one  wallop  at  the  pill  in  driving  off. 
And  when  I  drive  into  the  deep  grass,  as  is 
my  wont,  my  work  with  the  niblick  would 
make  you  think  of  somebody  bailing  out  a 
sinking  boat.    My  bunker  exercises  are  fre 
quently  what  you  might  call  violent.    And 
in  the  fall  of  the  year  I  do  a  lot  of  tramping 
about  in  the  woods  with  a  gun.  I  might  add 


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that  on  a  hunting  trip  I  can  walk  many  a 
skinny  person  into  a  state  of  total  exhaus 
tion."  I  stated  this  last  pridefully. 

"All  right  for  that,  then,"  he  said.  "We'll 
concede  that  you  get  an  abundance  of  exer 
cise.  Then  there  is  another  thing  you 
should  do,  and  of  the  two  this  is  by  far  the 
more  essential — you  should  go  on  a  diet." 

Right  there  I  turned  mentally  rebellious. 
I  wanted  to  reduce  my  bulk,  but  I  did  not 
want  to  reduce  my  provender.  I  offered 
counter-arguments  in  .defense.  I  pointed 
but  that  for  perhaps  five  years  past  my 
Weight  practically  had  been  stationary. 
Also  I  called  attention  to  the  fact  that  I  no 
longer  ate  so  heavily  as  once  I  had.  Not 
that  I  wished  actually  to  decry  my  appetite. 
It  had  been  a  good  friend  to  me  and  not  for 
worlds  would  I  slander  it.  I  have  a  sincere 
conviction  that  age  cannot  wither  nor  cus 
tom  stale  my  infinite  gastric  juices.  Never, 
I  trust,  will  there  come  a  time  when  I  shan't 
relish  my  victuals  or  when  I'll  feel  disin 
clined  to  chase  the  last  fugitive  bite  around 


80         One  Third  Off 

and  around  the  plate  until  I  overtake  it. 
But  I  presented  the  claim,  which  was  quite 
true,  that  I  was  not  the  consumer,  measured 
by  volume,  I  once  had  been.  Perhaps  my 
f  reighterage  spaces,  with  passing  years,  had 
grown  less  expansive  or  less  accommodating 
or  something. 

Likewise,  I  invited  his  consideration  of 
the  fact,  which  was  not  to  be  gainsaid  either, 
that  many  men  very  much  less  elaborated 
than  I  in  girth  customarily  ate  very  much 
more  than  I  did.  I  recalled,  offhand,  sun 
dry  conspicuous  examples  of  this  sort.  I  be 
lieve  I  mentioned  one  or  two  such.  For  in 
stance,  now,  there  was  Mr.  William  Jen 
nings  Bryan.  The  Bryan  appetite,  as  I  re 
marked  to  the  doctor,  is  one  of  the  chief 
landmarks  of  Mr.  Bryan's  home  city  of  Lin 
coln,  Nebraska.  They  take  the  sight-seeing 
tourists  around  to  have  a  look  at  it,  the  first 
thing. 

To  observe  Mr.  Bryan  breakfasting  on 
the  morning  when  a  national  Democratic 
convention  is  in  session  is  a  sight  worth  see- 


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ing.  A  double  order  of  cantaloupes  on  the 
half  shell,  a  derby  hat  full  of  oatmeal,  a  ros 
ary  of  sausages,  and  about  as  many  flapjacks 
as  would  be  required  to  tessellate  the  floor 
of  a  fair-sized  reception  hall  is  nothing  at 
all  for  him.  And  when  he  has  concluded 
his  meal  he  gets  briskly  up  and  strolls 
around  to  the  convention  hall  and  makes  a 
better  speech  and  a  longer  one  and  a  louder 
one  than  anybody.  Naturally,  time,  the  in 
satiable  remodeler,  has  worked  some  out 
ward  changes  in  Mr.  Bryan  since  the  brave 
old  days  of  the  cross  of  gold.  His  hair, 
chafed  by  the  constant  pressure  of  the  halo, 
has  retreated  up  and  ever  up  his  scalp  until 
the  forehead  extends  clear  over  and  down 
upon  the  sunset  slope.  The  little  fine 
wrinkles  are  thickly  smocked  at  the  corners 
of  the  eagle  eyes  that  flashed  so  fiercely  at 
the  cringing  plutocrats. 

But  his  bearing  is  just  as  graceful  and  his 
voice  just  as  silvery  and  as  strong  as  when  in 
'96  he  advocated  free  silver  to  save  the  race, 
or  when  he  advocated  anti-expansion  in  the 


82         One  Third  Off 

Philippines,  or  government  ownership  of 
the  railroads,  or  a  policy  of  nonprepared- 
ness  for  war  when  Germany  first  began  act 
ing  up — Grover  Cleveland  Bergdoll  felt  the 
same  way  about  it  and  so  did  Ma  Bergdoll; 
— and  I,  for  one,  have  no  doubt  that  Mr. 
Bryan  will  be  just  as  supple,  mentally  and 
physically,  three  years  hence  when,  if  he 
runs  true  to  form,  he  will  be  advocating  yet 
another  of  that  series  of  those  immemorial 
Jeffersonian  principles  of  the  fathers,  which 
he  thinks  up,  to  order,  right  out  of  his  own 
head,  when  a  campaign  impends.  Mr. 
Bryan  knows  how  to  play  the  political  game 
— none  better;  but  he  certainly  does  have  a 
large  discard.  That,  however,  is  aside  from 
the  main  issue. 

The  point  I  sought  to  bring  out  there  in 
the  office  of  my  friend  Doctor  So-and-so  was 
that  Mr.  Bryan,  to  my  knowledge,  ate  what 
he  craved  and  all  that  he  craved,  yet  did  not 
become  obese.  When  the  occasion  de 
manded  be  could  be  amply  bellicose,  but  the 
accent  was  not  upon  the  first  two  syllables. 


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I  cited  similar  cases  further  to  buttress 
my  position.  I  told  him  that  almost  the 
skinniest  human  being  I  ever  knew  had  been 
one  of  the  largest  eaters.  I  was  speaking 
now  of  John  Wesley  Bass,  the  champion 
raw-egg  eater  of  Massac  Precinct,  whose 
triumphant  career  knew  not  pause  or  dis 
comfiture  until  one  day  at  the  McCracken 
County  fair  when  suddenly  tragedy  dire  im 
pended. 

He  did  not  overextend  himself  in  the  gus 
tatory  line — that  to  one  of  John  Wesley 
Bass'  natural  gifts  and  attainments  well- 
nigh  would  have  been  impossible;  but  he  be 
trayed  a  lack  of  caution  when,  having  brok 
en  his  former  record  by  eating  thirty-six 
raw  eggs  at  a  sitting,  he  climbed  upon  a 
steam  merry-go-round,  shortly  thereafter 
falling  off  the  spotted  wooden  giraffe  which 
he  rode,  and  being  removed  to  the  city  hos 
pital  in  an  unconscious  condition. 

That  night  later  when  the  crisis  had 
passed  the  doctors  said  that  as  nearly  as  they 
could  figure  out  a  case  so  unusual,  Mr.  Bass 


84         One  Third  Off 

had  had  a  very  close  call  from  being  just 
naturally  scrambled  to  death.  I  spoke  at 
length  of  my  former  fellow  townsman's 
powers,  dwelling  heavily  upon  the  fact  that, 
despite  all,  he  never  thickened  up  at  the 
waistline.  Throughout  the  narrative,  how 
ever,  the  doctor  punctuated  my  periods  with 
derisive  snorts  which  were  disconcerting  to 
an  orderly  presentation  of  the  facts.  Never 
theless,  I  continued  until  I  had  reached 
what  I  regarded  as  a  telling  climax. 

"Piffle!"  he  rejoined.  "One  hoarse  rau 
cous  piffle  and  three  sharp  decisive  puffs  for 
your  arguments!  I  tell  you  that  what  ails 
you  is  this:  You  are  now  registering  the 
preliminary  warnings  of  obesity.  The  dan 
ger  is  not  actually  here  yet;  but  for  you  Na 
ture  already  has  set  the  danger  signals. 
There's  a  red  light  on  the  switch  for  one  I, 
Cobb.  You  are  due  before  a  great  while  for 
a  head-end  collision  with  your  own  health. 
You  can  take  my  advice  or  you  can  let  it 
alone.  That's  entirely  up  to  you.  Only 


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fion't  blame  me  if  you  come  back  here  some 
flay  all  telescoped  up  amidships. 

"And  please  don't  consume  time  which 
is  reasonably  valuable  to  me,  however  light 
ly  you  may  regard  it,  by  telling  me  now 
about  slim  men  who  eat  more  than  you  do 
yand  yet  keep  their  figures.  The  woods  are 
full  of  them ;  also  the  owl  wagons.  The  dif 
ference  between  such  men  as  those  you  have 
described  and  such  men  as  you  is  that  they 
were  made  to  be  thin  men  and  to  keep  on 
being  thin  men  regardless  of  their  food  con 
sumption,  and  that  your  sort  are  naturally 
predisposed  to  fatness.  You  can't  judge  their 
cases  by  yours  any  more  than  you  can  judge 
the  blood-sweating  behemoth  of  Holy  Writ 
by  the  plans  and  specifications  of  the  humble 
earwig. 

"One  man's  meat  is  another  man's  poison; 
that's  a  true  saying.  And  here's  another 
saying — one  cannot  eat  his  cake  and  have  it, 
too.  But  that's  an  error  so  far  as  you  are 
concerned.  The  trouble  with  you  is  that 
when  you  eat  your  cake  you  still  have  it — in 


86         One  Third  Off 

layers  of  fat.  If  you  want  to  get  rid  of  the 
layers  you'll  have  to  cut  out  the  cake,  or 
most  of  it,  anyway.  Must  I  make  you  a 
diagram,  or  is  this  plain  enough  for  your 
understanding?" 

It  was — abundantly.  But  I  still  had  one 
more  bright  little  idea  waiting  in  the  sec 
ond-line  trenches.  I  called  up  the  reserves. 

"Ahem!"  I  said.  "Well  now,  old  man, 
how  about  trying  some  of  these  electrical 
treatments  or  these  chemicalized  baths  or 
these  remedies  I  see  advertised?  I  was  read 
ing  only  the  other  day  where  one  successful 
operator  promised  on  his  word  of  honor  to 
take  off  flesh  for  anybody,  no  matter  who  it 
was,  without  interfering  with  that  person's 
table  habits  and  customs." 

My  friend  can  be  very  plain-spoken  when 
the  spirit  moves  him. 

"Say,  listen  to  me,"  he  snapped,  "or 
better  still,  you'd  better  write  down  what 
I'm  about  to  say  and  stick  it  in  your  hat 
where  you  can  find  it  and  consult  it  when 
your  mind  begins  wandering  again.  Those 


ARE   NOW    REGISTERING   THE    PRELIMINARY    WARNINGS " 


Page  87 


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special  mechanical  devices  to  reduce  fat 
people  are  contrived  for  the  benefit  of  men 
and  lazy  women  who  are  too  slothful  to 
take  exercise  or  else  too  besotted  in  the  mat 
ter  of  food  indulgence  to  face  the  alterna 
tive  of  dieting.  They  may  not  do  any  harm 
—properly  operated,  they  probably  do  not 
—but,  at  best,  I  would  regard  them  as  being 
merely  temporary  expedients  specially  de 
vised  as  first  aid  to  the  incurably  lazy. 

"And  as  for  pills  and  boluses  and  bottled 
goods  guaranteed  to  reduce  your  weight, 
and  as  for  all  these  patented  treatments  and 
proprietary  preparations  which  you  see 
boosted  in  the  papers — bah !  Either  they  are 
harmless  mixtures,  in  which  event  they'll 
probably  do  you  no  serious  injury,  but  will 
certainly  do  you  no  real  good;  or  else  they 
contain  drugs  which,  taken  to  excess,  may 
cut  you  down  in  size,  but  have  the  added 
drawback  of  very  probably  cutting  short 
your  life. 

"No,  sir-ree!  For  you  it's  dieting,  now 
and  from  now  on.  You  may  be  able  to  relax 


90         One  Third  Off 

your  diet  in  time,  but  you  can  never  alto 
gether  forego  it.  Give  us  this  day  our  daily 
diet — that's  your  proper  prayer.  And  you'd 
better  start  praying  pretty  soon,  too!" 

"All  right,  doc,"  I  said  resignedly. 
"You've  practically  converted  me.  I  can't 
say  I'm  happy  over  the  prospect,  but  if  you 
say  so  I'm  prepared  to  become  a  true  be 
liever.  But  since,  between  us,  we're  about 
to  take  all  the  joy  out  of  life,  let's  be  thor 
ough.  What  must  I  do  to  be  saved?  Give 
me  the  horrible  details  right  here.  I  might 
as  well  hear  the  worst  at  one  session." 

"I'm  no  dietitian,"  he  said.  "I  don't  pro 
fess  to  be  one.  That's  not  my  line — my 
line  is  the  diagnostic.  Of  course  I  could  lay 
down  a  few  broad  general  rules  for  your 
guidance  —  any  experienced  practitioner 
could  do  that — but  to  get  the  best  returns 
you  should  consult  a  diet  specialist.  How 
ever,  in  parting — I  have  several  paying 
guests  waiting  for  me  and  we  are  now  about 
to  part — I  will  throw  in  one  more  bit  of  ad 
vice  without  charge.  No  matter  what  sug- 


Office  Visits,  $10       91 

gestions  you  may  get  from  any  quarter,  I 
would  urge  you  not  to  follow  any  banting 
formula  so  rigorous  as  to  take  off  your 
superfluous  flesh  very  rapidly.  Take  your 
time  about  it.  If  you  live  as  long  as  both 
of  us  hope  you  may  you'll  have  plenty  of 
time.  There's  no  rush,  so  go  at  it  gradually. 
Be  regular  about  it,  but  don't  be  too  ambi- 
jtious  at  the  outset.  Don't  try  to  turn  your 
self  into  a  tricky  sprite  in  two  weeks.  For  a 
fat  man  too  abruptly  to  strip  the  flesh  off  his 
bones  I  regard  as  dangerous.  It  weakens 
him  and  depletes  his  powers  of  resistance 
and  makes  him  fair  game  for  any  stray  mi 
crobe  which  may  be  cruising  about  looking 
for  a  place  to  set  up  housekeeping." 

At  first  blush  it  might  appear  to  the  lay 
mind  that  a  germ  would  scarcely  care  to 
pick  a  bone  when  it  had  fat  meat  to  feed 
on,  but  my  own  recollections  bore  out  my 
friend's  statements.  I  remembered  a  man 
pf  my  acquaintance,  an  enormously  fleshy 
and  unwieldy  man,  who,  fearing  apoplexy, 
undertook  a  radical  scheme  of  banting.  He 


92       One  Third  Off 

lost  fifty  pounds  in  three  months,  so  apo- 
.plexy  did  not  get  him,  but  pneumonia  did 
with  great  suddenness.  He  was  sick  only 
three  days.  Nobody  suspected  that  he  was 
seriously  ill  until  the  third  day,  when  sud 
denly  he  just  hauled  off  and  died. 

So  I  promised  to  have  a  care  against  seek 
ing  to  hurry  myself  right  out  of  the  flounder 
class  and  right  into  the  smelt  division. 


Sons  of  the  Boiled  Spinach  93 


CHAPTER  EIGHT 


The  Friendly  Sons  of  the 
Boiled  Spinach 


Sons  of  the  Boiled  Spinach  95 


CHAPTER  VIII 

The  Friendly  Sons  of  the 
Boiled  Spinach 

MY  friend  gave  me  the  names  of 
several  men  of  acknowledged 
standing  and  told  me  I  should  be 
making  no  mistake  did  I  put  myself  in  the 
hands  of  any  one  on  the  list.  I  thanked  him 
and  departed  from  his  presence.  To  the 
casual  eye  I  may  have  seemed,  going  away, 
to  be  in  high  spirits;  but,  confidentially,  I 
wasn't  feeling  so  very  brash.  My  spirits 
were  low.  I  had  heard  the  truth — I  made 
no  effort  to  deceive  myself  there — but  the 
truth  was  painful. 

Still,  knowing  what  I  should  do,  I  hesi 
tated,  temporizing  with  myself.  I  gave  a 
couple  of  days  of  intensive  meditation  to 
the  subject,  and  then  I  reached  this  conclu 
sion:  I  would  read  a  few  standard  and 


96         One  Third  Off 

orthodox  works  on  dietetics,  and,  so  doing, 
try  to  arrive  at  least  at  a  superficial  knowl 
edge  of  the  matter.  Also,  I  would  balance 
what  one  recognized  authority  said  as 
against  what  another  recognized  authority 
said,  and  then,  before  going  to  a  specialist, 
I  would  do  a  little  personal  experimenting 
with  my  diet  and  mark  the  effects. 

I  arrived  at  this  decision  privately,  tak 
ing  no  one  into  my  confidence.  And  with 
out  an  intent  to  deprive  any  hard-worked 
specialist  of  a  prospective  fee,  I  shall  ever 
continue  to  believe  that  the  second  part  of 
the  course  I  chose  to  follow  was  a  wise  one. 
It  might  not  serve  my  brother-in-obesity, 
but  it  served  me  well.  I'm  sure  of  that. 

But  the  first  part  of  the  system  naturally 
came  first.  This  had  to  do  with  research 
work  among  the  best  authorities.  Here  I 
struck  one  of  the  snags  that  rise  in  the  path 
way  of  the  hardy  soul  who  goes  adventur 
ing  into  any  given  department  of  the  science 
of  medicine  and  its  allied  sciences.  I  was 
pained  to  observe  how  rare  it  was  for  two 


Sons  of  the  Boiled  Spinach  97 

experts,  of  whatsoever  period,  to  agree  upon 
a  single  essential  element.  An  amateur  in 
vestigator  was  left  at  a  loss  to  fathom  why 
such  entirely  opposite  conclusions  should 
have  been  arrived  at  by  the  members  of  the 
same  school  when  presumably  both  had  had 
the  same  raw  materials  to  work  on.  By 
their  raw  materials  I  mean  their  patients. 
But  so  it  was. 

The  ancient  apostles  of  dietetics,  the  orig 
inal  pathfinders  into  a  hitherto  untracked 
field,  had  disciples  who  set  out  to  follow  in 
their  footsteps,  but  before  they  had  traveled 
very  far  along  the  alimentary  trail  the  dis 
ciples  were  quarreling  bitterly  with  the 
masters'  deductions  and  conclusions.  To 
day's  school  was  snooty  touching  on  the 
major  opinions  of  yesterday's  crowd,  and 
to-morrow's  crowd  already  made  faces  at 
to-day's. 

On  just  two  points  I  found  a  unanimity 
of  opinion  among  what  might  be  termed 
the  middle  group  of  dietetic  explorers  as 
counter-distinguished  from  the  pioneering 


98         One  Third  Off 

cult  and  the  modern  or  comparatively  mod 
ern.  Each  one  was  so  absolutely  certain 
that  he  was  so  absolutely  right  and  so  abso 
lutely  certain  that  all  his  contemporaries 
were  so  absolutely  wrong. 

At  the  beginning,  it  seemed,  a  reduction 
of  the  sufferer's  flesh  had  been  attempted 
by  the  simple  device  of  bleeding  him  copi 
ously — not  with  a  monthly  statement,  as 
latterly,  but  with  a  lancet.  Abundant  drink 
ing  of  vinegar  also  had  been  recommended 
as  a  means  to  accomplish  the  desired  end. 
They  were  noble  drinkers  in  the  olden 
times,  but  until  I  began  delving  into  litera 
ture  of  the  subject  I  did  not  suspect  that 
there  had  been  any  out-and-out  vinegar 
topers. 

There  was  citation  in  an  early  work  of 
the  interesting  case  of  the  Marquis  of  Cor- 
tona,  a  subchieftain  under  the  Duke  of 
Alva,  and  a  fine  fat  old  butcher  he  must 
have  been,  too,  by  all  tellings.  Finding 
himself  grown  so  rotund  that  no  longer 
could  he  enter  with  zest  into  the  massacre 


Sons  of  the  Boiled  Spinach  99 

bees  and  torture  outings  which  the  Span 
iards  were  carrying  on  in  the  harried 
Netherlands,  the  marquis  had  recourse  to 
vinegar;  and  so  efficacious  was  the  treat 
ment  that,  as  the  tradition  runs,  he  soon 
could  wrap  his  loosened  skin  about  him  in 
great  slack  folds  like  a  cloak,  and  thus,  close- 
reefed,  go  merrily  murdering  his  way  across 
the  Low  Countries. 

One  pictures  the  advantages  accruing. 
In  cold  weather,  now,  he  might  overlap  his 
wrinkles  in  a  clapboarded  effect  and  save 
the  expense  of  laying  in  heavy  underwear. 
True,  this  might  give  to  the  wearer  a 
clinker-built  appearance;  still  it  would 
keep  him  nice  and  warm,  and  no  doubt  he 
had  his  armor  on  outside  the  rest  of  his 
things.  But  likewise  there  must  have  been 
drawbacks.  Suppose,  now,  the  marquis 
were  caught  out  in  blowy  weather  and  the 
wind  worked  in  under  his  tucks  and  the 
ratlines  pulled  loose  and,  all  full-rigged  and 
helpless,  bellying  and  billowing  and  flap 
ping  and  jibing,  he  went  scudding  against 


100       One  Third  Off 

his  will  before  the  gale.  Could  he  hope  to 
tack  and  go  about  before  he  blew  clear  over 
into  the  next  county?  I  doubt  it. 

And  suppose  he  inflated  himself  for  a 
party  or  a  reception  or  something,  and  a 
practical  joker  put  a  tack  in  a  chair  and  he 
sat  down  on  it  and  had  a  blow-out.  The 
thought  is  not  a  pretty  one,  yet  the  thing 
were  possible. 

From  these  crude  beginnings  I  worked 
my  way  down  toward  the  present  day.  Doc 
tor  Banting,  of  England,  the  father  of  lat 
ter-day  dietetics  from  whose  name  in  com 
memoration  of  his  services  to  mankind  we 
derive  the  verb  intransitive  "to  bant,"  had 
theories  wherein  his  chief  contemporaneous 
German  rival,  Epstein  the  Bavarian,  radi 
cally  disagreed  with  him.  Voit,  coming 
along  subsequently,  disagreed  in  important 
details  with  both.  Among  the  moderns  I 
discerned  where  Dr.  Woods  Hutchinson 
had  his  pet  ideas  and  Doctor  Wiley  had  his, 
diametrically  opposed.  So  it  went.  There 
was  almost  as  much  of  disputation  here  as 


Sons  of  the  Boiled  Spinach  101 

there  is  when  a  federation  of  women's  clubs 
is  holding  an  annual  election.  It  was  all 
so  very  confusing  to  one  aiming  to  do  the 
right  thing. 

One  learned  savant  flatly  laid  down  the 
ultimatum  that  the  individual  seeking  to 
reduce  should  cut  out  all  pork  products 
from  chitterings  clear  through  the  list  to 
headcheese  and  give  his  undivided  support 
to  the  red  meats  and  the  white.  One  of  his 
brethren  was  equally  positive  that  I  might 
partake  of  bacon  and  even  ham  in  modera 
tion,  but  urged  that  I  walk  around  red  meat 
as  though  it  were  a  pesthouse.  Yet  a  third — 
a  foe,  plainly,  to  the  butcher,  but  a  welK 
wisher  to  the  hay-and-produce  dealer  if 
ever  one  lived — recommended  that  I  should 
eliminate  all  meat  of  whatsoever  character 
or  color  and  stick  closely  to  fodder,  rough 
age  and  processed  ensilage.  I  judge  he  sent 
his  more  desperate  cases  to  a  livery  stable. 

According  to  one  dictum,  bread  was  all 
right  up  to  a  certain  point,  and,  according 
to  another,  all  wrong.  This  man  here  held 


102       One  Third  Off 

a  brief  for  beans,  especially  the  succulent 
baked  bean ;  that  man  yonder  served  solemn 
warning  upon  me  that  if  perversely  I  per 
sisted  to  continue  to  eat  baked  beans  the 
fat  globules  would  form  so  fast  I  would 
have  the  sensation  that  a  little  boy  was  in 
side  of  me  somewhere  blowing  bubbles. 
The  writer  didn't  exactly  say  this,  but  it 
was  the  inference  I  drew  from  his  remarks. 
Eat  dried  fruits  until  your  seams  give, 
said  Doctor  A.  Avoid  dried  fruits  as  you 
would  the  plague,  counseled  the  equally 
eminent  Doctor  B.  Professor  C  considered 
the  drinking  of  water  with  meals  highly  in 
advisable;  whereas  Professor  D  said  that 
without  adding  an  extra  ounce  of  weight  I 
might  consume  water  until  my  fluid  con 
tents  sloshed  up  and  down  in  me  when  I 
walked,  and  merely  by  getting  a  young  lady 
in  Oriental  costume  to  stand  alongside  me 
I  might  qualify  at  a  Sunday-school  enter 
tainment  for  the  entire  supporting  cast  of 
the  familiar  tableau  entitled  Rebecca  at  the 
Well.  He  intimated  that  just  so  I  stopped 


Sons  of  the  Boiled  Spinach  103 

short  of  committing  suicide  as  an  inside  job 
all  would  be  fine  and  dandy.  I  do  not  claim 
that  these  were  his  words;  this  is  the  free 
interpretation  of  his  meaning.  Sink  the 
knife  in  the  butter  to  the  very  hilt — there 
will  be  no  ill  effects  but  only  a  beneficial 
outcome — declares  such-and-such  a  food 
faddist.  Eschew  butter  by  all  means  or  ac 
cept  the  consequences,  clarions  an  earnest 
voice.  Well,  I  never  was  much  of  a  hand 
for  eschewed  butter  anyway.  We  keep  our 
own  cow  and  make  our  own  butter  and  it 
seems  to  slip  down,  just  so. 

In  the  vegetable  kingdom  the  controversy 
raged  with  unabated  fury.  The  boiled 
prune,  blandest  and  most  inoffensive  of 
breakfast  dishes,  formed  the  basis  of  a  spir 
ited  debate.  There  were  pro-prunists  and 
there  were  con-prunists.  The  parsnip  had 
its  champions  and  its  antagonists ;  the  carrot 
its  defenders  and  its  assailants.  In  this 
quarter  was  the  cabbage  heartily  indorsed, 
there  was  it  belittled  and  made  naught  of. 
The  sprightly  spring  onion,  already  socially 


104       One  Third  Off 

scorned  in  some  of  the  best  lay  circles,  suf 
fered  attack  at  the  hands  of  at  least  one 
scientific  and  scholarly  professional. 

After  reading  his  strictures  I  remarked  to 
myself  that  really  there  remained  but  one 
field  of  useful  popularity  for  the  onion  to 
adorn;  in  time  it  might  hope  to  supplant 
the  sunflower  as  the  floral  emblem  of  Kan 
sas,  as  typifying  a  great  political  principle 
which  originated  in  that  state:  The  Initia 
tive,  when  one  took  a  chance  and  ate  a 
young  onion;  the  Referendum,  while  one's 
digestive  apparatus  wrestled  with  it;  the 
Recall,  if  it  disagreed  with  one.  Alone,  of 
all  the  vegetables,  stood  spinach,  with  not 
a  single  detractor.  On  this  issue  the  vote 
in  the  affirmative  practically  was  by  accla 
mation.  I  am  in  position  to  state  that  boiled 
spinach  has  not  an  enemy  among  the  ex 
perts.  This  seems  but  fair — it  has  so  few 
friends  among  the  eating  public. 

I  observed  much  and  confusing  talk  of 
the  value  of  nitrogens,  proteids  and — when 
I  had  reached  the  ultra-modernists — vita- 


Sons  of  the  Boiled  Spinach  105 

mines.  Vitamines,  I  gathered,  had  only  re 
cently  been  discovered,  yet  by  the  progres 
sives  they  were  held  to  be  of  the  supremest 
importance  in  the  equation  of  properly  bal 
anced  human  sustenance.  To  my  knowledge 
I  had  never  consciously  eaten  vitamines  un 
less  a  vitamine  was  what  gave  guaranteed 
strictly  fresh  string  beans,  as  served  at  a 
table-d'hote  restaurant,  that  peculiar  flavor. 
Here  all  along  I  had  figured  it  was  the 
tinny  taste  of  the  can,  which  shows  how  ig 
norant  one  may  be  touching  on  vitally  im 
portant  matters.  I  visualized  a  suitable 
luncheon  for  one  banting  according  to  the 
newest  and  most  generally  approved  for 
mula: 

RELISH 
MIXED  GELATINOIDS 

POTAGE 
STRAINED  NITROGEN  GUMBO 

ENTREE 
GRILLED  PROTEIDS  WITH  GLOBULIN 

PATTIES 

DESSERT 

COMPOTE  OF  ASSORTED  VITAMINES 


106       One  Third  Off 

Or  the  alternative  course  for  one  sin 
cerely  desirous  of  reducing,  who  believed 
everything  he  saw  in  print,  was  to  cut  out 
all  the  proscribed  articles  of  food — which 
meant  everything  edible  except  spinach — 
and  starve  gracefuly  on  a  diet  composed 
exclusively  of  boiled  spinach,  with  the  pros 
pect  of  dying  a  dark  green  death  in  from 
three  to  six  weeks  and  providing  one's  own 
protective  coloration  if  entombed  in  a  cem 
etery  containing  cedars. 

Personally  I  was  not  favorably  inclined 
toward  either  plan,  so  I  elected  to  let  my 
conscience  be  my  guide,  backed  by  personal 
observation  and  personal  experimentation. 
I  was  traveling  pretty  constantly  this  past 
spring,  and  in  the  smoking  compartments 
of  the  Pullmans,  where  all  men,  for  some 
curious  reason,  grow  garrulous  and  confi 
dential,  I  put  crafty  leading  questions  to 
such  of  my  fellow  travelers  as  were  over 
sized  and  made  mental  notes  of  their 
answers  for  my  own  subsequent  use.  Since 
the  Eighteenth  Amendment  put  the  nine- 


Sons  of  the  Boiled  Spinach  107 

teenth  hole  out  of  commission,  prohibition 
and  how  to  evade  it  are  the  commonest  of 
all  conversational  topics  among  those  mov 
ing  about  from  place  to  place  in  America; 
but  the  subject  of  what  a  man  eats,  and  more 
particularly  what  he  eats  for  breakfast,  runs 
it  a  close  second  for  popularity. 

For  example,  there  is  the  seasoned  trans 
atlantic  tourist  who,  on  the  occasion  of  a 
certain  terrifically  stormy  passage,  was  for 
three  days  the  only  person  on  board  ex 
cepting  the  captain  who  never  missed  a 
single  meal.  You  find  him  everywhere; 
there  must  be  a  million  or  more  of  him;  and 
he  loves  to  talk  about  it,  and  he  does. 

But  even  more  frequently  encountered  is 
the  veteran  drummer — no,  beg  pardon,  the 
veteran  district  sales  manager,  for  there 
aren't  any  drummers  any  more,  or  even  any 
traveling  salesmen;  but  instead  we  have 
district  sales  managers  featuring  strong  sell 
ing  points — I  say,  even  more  frequently 
encountered  is  the  veteran  district  sales 
manager,  wearing  a  gravy-colored  waist- 


108       One  Third  Off 

coat  if  a  tasty  dresser,  or  a  waistcoat  of  a 
nongravy-colored  or  contrasting  shade  if 
careless,  who  craves  to  tell  strangers  what, 
customarily,  he  eats  for  breakfast. 

I  made  it  a  point  to  study  the  proportions 
and  hearken  to  the  disclosures  of  such  a 
one,  and  if  he  carried  his  stomach  in  a 
hanging-garden  effect,  with  terraces  rip 
pling  down  and  flying  buttresses  and  all; 
and  if  he  had  a  pasty,  unhealthy  complexion 
or  an  apoplectic  tint  to  his  skin  I  said  to  my 
self  that  thenceforth  I  should  apply  the 
reverse  English  to  his  favorite  matutinal 
prescription. 


The  Fallen  Egg     109 


CHAPTER  NINE 


Adventure  of  The 
Fallen  Egg 


The  Fallen  Egg      111 


CHAPTER  IX 

Adventure  of  The  Fallen 

Egg 

SO,  having  mapped  out  my  campaign 
of  attack  against  my  fat,  I  rose  one 
morning  from  my  berth  in  the  sleep 
ing  car  and  I  dressed;  and  firmly  clutching 
my  new-formed   resolution  to   prevent  its 
escape,  I  made  my  way  to  the  dining  car 
and  sat  down  and  gave  my  order  to  the  af 
fable  honor  graduate  of  Tuskegee  Institute 
who  graciously  deigned  to  wait  on  me. 

Now,  theretofore,  for  so  far  back  as  I  re 
membered,  breakfast  had  been  my  heartiest 
meal  of  the  entire  day,  with  perhaps  two 
exceptions — luncheon  and  dinner.  Prec 
edent  inclined  me  toward  ordering  about  as 
many  pieces  of  sliced  banana  as  would  be 
required  to  button  a  fairly  tall  woman's 
princess  frock  all  the  way  down  her  back, 


112       One  Third  Off 

with  plenty  of  sugar  and  cream,  and  like 
wise  a  large  porringer  of  some  standard 
glutinous  cereal,  to  be  followed  by  sausages 
with  buckwheat  cakes  and  a  few  odd  kick 
shaws  and  comfits  in  the  way  of  strawberry 
preserves  and  hot  buttered  toast  and  coffee 
that  was  half  cream,  and  first  one  thing  and 
then  another.  But  Spartanlike  I  put  temp 
tation  sternly  behind  me  and  told  the  offi 
ciating  collegian  to  bring  me  plain  boiled 
prunes,  coffee  with  hot  milk  and  saccharin 
tablets,  dry  toast  and  one  dropped  egg. 

The  prunes  and  the  coffee  were  accord 
ing  to  specifications,  although,  lacking  the 
customary  cream  and  three  lumps  of  sugar, 
the  coffee  was  in  the  nature  of  a  profound 
disappointment.  But  a  superficial  inquiry 
convinced  me  that  the  egg  was  not  properly 
a  dropped  egg  at  all. 

Here  was  a  fallen  egg,  if  I  ever  saw  one. 
I  was  filled  with  pity  for  it — poor,  forsaken, 
abandoned  thing,  with  none  to  speak  a  kind 
word  for  it!  And  probably  more  sinned 
against  than  sinning,  too.  Perhaps  there 


The  Fallen  Egg      113 

was  hereditary  influences  to  be  reckoned 
with.  Perhaps  its  producer  had  been  in 
cubator  raised,  with  no  mother  to  guide  her 
and  only  the  Standard  Oil  Company  for  a 
foster  parent.  And  what  would  a  New 
Jersey  corporation  know  about  raising  a 
hen? 

Thus  in  sudden  compassion  I  mused.  To 
the  waiter,  though,  I  said : 

"There  has  been  a  mistake  here,  alum 
nus.  This  egg  never  was  meant  to  be 
dropped — it  was  meant  to  be  thrown. 
Kindly  remove  the  melancholy  evidences." 

He  offered  to  provide  a  substitute,  but 
the  edge  of  my  zest  seemed  dulled.  I  made 
dry  toast  the  climax  of  my  chastely  simple 
repast.  It  was  simple  and  it  was  chaste,  but 
otherwise  not  altogether  what  I  should 
characterize  as  a  successful  repast.  It 
lacked,  as  it  were. 

Let  us  pass  along  to  noontime.  Ere  noon 
time  came  I  was  consumed  with  gnawing 
pains  of  emptiness.  As  nearly  as  I  might 
judge,  I  contained  naught  save  vast  hollow 


114          One  Third  Off 

spaces  and  acoustics  and  vacuums  and 
empty,  echoing,  neglected  convolutions. 
Sorely  was  I  tempted  to  relax  the  rigors  of 
the  just-inaugurated  regime ;  nobly,  though, 
I  resisted  the  impulse. 

As  I  look  back  now  on  that  day  I  find  the 
memory  of  my  suffering  has  dimmed 
slightly.  The  passage  of  weeks  and  months 
has  served  to  soften  the  harsh  outlines  of 
poignant  recollection.  What  now  in  retro 
spect  most  impresses  me  is  the  heroism  I 
displayed,  the  stark  fortitude,  the  grandeur 
of  will  power,  the  triumph  for  character. 
Sheer  gallantry,  I  call  it. 

For  my  midday  meal  I  had  more  dry 
toast,  a  reduced  portion  of  boiled  tongue 
and  a  raw  apple — satisfying  enough  to 
some,  I  grant  you,  but  to  me  no  more  than 
a  tease  to  my  palate.  Long  before  three 
o'clock  I  knew  exactly  how  a  tapeworm 
feels  when  its  landlord  goes  on  a  hunger 
strike.  Every  salivary  gland  I  owned  was 
standing  on  tiptoe  screaming  for  help; 
every  little  mucous  membrane  had  a  sor- 


The  Fallen  Egg      115 

row  all  its  own.  Each  separate  fiber  of  my 
innermost  being  cried  out  for  greases  and 
for  sugars  and  for  the  wonted  starchy  com 
pounds  for  to  stay  it  and  for  to  comfort  it. 
I  underwent  pangs  such  as  had  not  been 
mine  since  away  back  yonder  in  August  of 
1914,  in  the  time  of  the  sack  of  Belgium, 
when  the  Germans  locked  up  five  of  us  for 
a  day  and  a  night  in  a  cow  stable  where  no 
self-respecting  cow  would  voluntarily  have 
stayed,  and  then  sent  us  by  train  under 
guard  on  a  three-day  journey  into  Germany, 
yet  all  the  while  kept  right  on  telling  us  we 
were  not  prisoners  but  guests  of  the  German 
Army.  And  at  the  end  of  the  third  day 
we  reached  the  unanimous  conclusion 
among  ourselves  that  the  only  outstanding 
distinction  we  could  see,  from  where  we 
sat,  between  being  prisoners  of  the  German 
Army  and  guests  of  the  German  Army  was 
that  from  time  to  time  they  did  feed  the 
prisoners.  For  throughout  the  journey  the 
eight  of  us — since  by  now  our  little  party 
had  grown — lived  rather  simply  and  fru- 


116       One  Third  Off 

gaily  and,  I  might  say,  sketchily  on  rations 
consisting  of  one  loaf  of  soldiers'  bread,  one 
bottle  of  mineral  water  and  a  one-pound 
pot  of  sour  and  rancid  honey  which  must 
have  emanated  in  the  first  place  from  a  lot 
of  very  morbid,  low-minded  bees. 

However,  in  those  exciting  days  there 
were  many  little  moving  distractions  about 
to  keep  one  from  brooding  overmuch  on 
thoughts  of  lacking  provender.  I  boast  not, 
but  merely  utter  a  verity,  when  I  state  that 
every  time  I  shook  myself  I  shifted  the 
center  of  population.  Where  we  had  been 
the  lesser  wild  life  of  midcontinental  Eu 
rope  abounded.  In  the  matter  of  a  dis 
tinction  which  had  come  to  me  utterly  with 
out  solicitation  or  effort  on  my  part  I  have 
no  desire  to  brag,  but  in  justice  to  myself — 
and  my  boarders — I  must  add  that  at  that 
moment,  of  all  the  human  beings  in  Central 
Europe,  I  was  the  most  densely  inhabited. 
My  companions  scratched  along,  doing 
fairly  well,  too ;  but  I  led  the  field — I  was 
so  much  roomier  than  any  one  of  them  was. 


The  Fallen  Egg      117 

But  here  aboard  this  Pullman  on  this, 
the  dedicatory  day  of  my  self-imposed 
martyrdom,  I  could  not  lose  myself  as  I 
had  on  that  former  historic  occasion  in  the 
ardor  of  chasing  the  small  game  of  the 
•country.  By  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon 
I  could  appreciate  the  sensations  of  a  conch 
shell  on  a  parlor  whatnot.  I  had  a  feeling 
that  if  anyone  were  to  press  his  ear  up 
against  me  he  would  hear  a  murmuring 
sound  as  of  distant  sea  waves.  Yet,  mark 
you,  I  held  bravely  out,  fighting  still  the 
good  fight.  This,  then,  was  my  dinner,  if 
such  it  might  in  truth  be  called:  Clear 
soup,  a  smallish  slice  of  rare  roast  beef  cut 
shaving  thin,  gluten  bread  sparsely  but 
tered,  a  cloud  of  watercress  no  larger  than 
a  man's  hand,  another  raw  apple  and  a  bit 
of  domestic  cheese — nothing  rich,  nothing 
exotic,  no  melting  French  frontages,  no 
creamy  Danish  pastries. 

Only  when  I  reached  my  demi-tasse, 
which  I  took  straight,  did  I  permit  myself 


118       One  Third  Off 

a  touch  of  luxury.     I  lit  my  cigar  with  a 
genuine  imported  Swedish  parlor  match. 

Followed  then  the  first  comforting  mani 
festation,  the  first  gratefully  registered 
taste  of  recompense  for  my  privations.  I 
had  to  speak  that  night  and  in  a  large  hall, 
too,  and  I  found  my  voice  to  be  clearer  and 
stronger  than  usual,  and  found,  also,  that  I 
spoke  with  much  less  effort  than  usual.  I 
was  sure  partial  fasting  during  the  day  was 
bearing  fruits  in  the  evening,  and  I  was 
right,  as  subsequent  evening  experiences 
proved  to  me.  I  had  rather  dreaded  that 
hunger  gripes  would  make  my  night  a 
sleepless  one,  but  it  didn't  happen.  I  may 
have  dreamed  longing  dreams  about  vic 
tuals,  but  I  tore  off  eight  solid  hours  of  un 
bridled  and — i  dare  say — uproarious  rest. 


Wherein  Our  Hero  Falters  119 


CHAPTER  TEN 


Wherein  Our  Hero  Falters 


Wherein  Our  Hero  Falter s\2\ 

CHAPTER  X 

Wherein  Our  Hero  Falters 

NEXT  day  I  kept  it  up,  varying  the 
first  day's  menus  slightly,  but 
keeping  the  bulk  consumption 
down,  roughly,  to  about  one-half  or  pos 
sibly  one-third  what  my  rations  formerly 
had  been.  Before  night  of  the  second  day 
that  all-gone  sensation  had  vanished.  Al 
ready  I  had  made  the  agreeable  discovery 
that  I  could  get  along  and  be  reasonably 
happy  on  from  35  to  50  per  cent  of  what 
until  then  I  had  deludedly  thought  was  re 
quired  to  nourish  me.  Before  the  week 
ended  I  felt  fitter  and  sprier  in  every  way 
than  I  had  for  years  past;  more  alive,  more 
interested  in  things,  quicker  on  my  feet  and 
brisker  in  my  mental  processes  than  in  a 
long  time.  The  chronic  logy,  foggy  feel 
ing  in  my  head  disappeared  and  failed  to 


122       One  Third  Off 

return.  I  may  add  that  to  date  it  still  has 
not  returned.  Relieved  of  pressure  against 
its  valves — at  least  I  assume  that  was  what 
came  to  pass — my  heart  began  functioning 
as  I  assume  a  normal  heart  should  function, 
and  at  once  the  sense  of  oppression  in  the 
neighborhood  of  the  heart  was  gone. 

Within  the  same  week  I  took  most  joyful 
note  of  the  fact  that  I  was  losing  flesh  in 
the  vicinities  where  mainly  I  craved  to  lose 
it — amidships  and  at  the  throat.  I  still  had 
a  double  chin  in  front,  but  the  third  one, 
which  I  carried  behind  as  a  spare — the  one 
which  ran  all  the  way  round  my  neck  and 
lapped  at  the  back  like  a  clergyman's  col 
lar — was  melting  away.  And  unless  I  was 
woefully  mistaken,  I  no  longer  had  to  fight 
so  desperate  a  battle  with  the  waistband  of 
my  trousers  when  I  dressed  in  the  morn 
ings. 

I  was  not  mistaken.  Glory  be  and  like 
wise  selah!  My  first  and  second  mezza 
nines  were  visibly  shrinking.  By  these  signs 
and  portents  was  I  stimulated  to  continue 


Wherein  Our  Hero  Falters  123 

the  campaign  so  auspiciously  launched  and 
so  satisfactorily  progressing. 

I  shall  not  deny  that  in  the  second  week 
I  did  some  backsliding.  The  swing  of  the 
tour  carried  me  into  the  South.  It  was  the 
South  in  the  splendor  of  the  young  spring 
time  when  the  cardinal  bird  sang  his  mat 
ing  song.  With  brocading  dandelions  each 
pasture  gloriously  became  even  as  the  Field 
of  the  Cloth  of  Gold;  and  lo,  the  beginning 
pf  the  strawberry  shortcake  season  over 
lapped  the  last  of  the  smoked-hog-jowl-and- 
turnip-greens  period,  and  the  voice  of  the 
turtle  was  heard  in  the  land. 

Figuratively,  I  was  swept  off  my  feet 
when  a  noble  example  of  Southern  woman 
hood  put  before  my  famished  eyes  the  fol 
lowing  items,  to  wit:  About  half  a  bushel 
of  newly  picked  turnip  greens,  rearing 
islandwise  above  a  sloshing  sea  of  pot  licker 
and  supporting  upon  their  fronded  crests 
the  boiled  but  impressive  countenance  of 
a  hickory-cured  shote,  the  whole  being  gar 
nished  with  paired-off  poached  eggs  like 


124       One  Third  Off 

the  topaz  eyes  of  beauteous  blond  virgins 
turned  soulfully  heavenward;  and  set  off 
by  flankings  of  small  piping-hot  corn  pones 
made  with  meal  and  water  and  salt  and 
shortening,  as  Providence  intended  a  proper 
corn  pone  should  be  made. 

Then  the  years  rolled  away  like  a  scroll 
and  once  again  was  I  back  in  the  Kentucky 
foothills,  a  lean  and  lathy  sprout  of  a  kid, 
a  limber  six-foot  length  of  perpendicular 
appetite ;  and  it  was  twelve  o'clock  for  some 
people,  but  it  was  dinner  time  for  me! 

My  glad  low  gurgle  of  anticipatory  joy 
smothered  the  small  inner  voice  of  caution 
as  I  leaped,  as  it  were,  headlong  into  that 
bosky  dell  of  young  turnip  greens.  So,  hav 
ing  set  my  feet  on  the  downward  path  I 
backslode  some  more — for  behold,  what 
should  come  along  then  but  an  old-fash 
ioned  shortcake,  fashioned  of  crisp  biscuit 
dough,  with  more  fresh  strawberries  bedded 
down  between  its  multiplied  and  mounting 
layers  than  you  could  buy  at  the  Fritz- 
Charlton  for  a  hundred  and  ninety  dollars. 


Wherein  Our  Hero  Falters  125 

Right  then  and  there  was  when  and 
where  I  lost  all  I  had  gained  in  a  fortnight 
of  stalwart  self -disciplining;  rather  it  was 
where  I  regained  all  I  haply  had  lost. 
When,  gorged  and  comatose,  I  staggered 
from  that  fair  matron's  depleted  table  I 
should  never  have  dared  to  trundle  over  a 
wooden  culvert  at  faster  than  four  miles  an 
hour.  Either  I  should  have  slowed  down 
or  waited  until  they  could  put  in  some  re- 
enforced-concrete  underpinnings. 

I  was  right  back  where  I  had  started,  and 
for  the  moment  didn't  care  a  darn  either. 
Sin  is  glorious  when  you  sin  gloriously. 

But  I  rallied.  I  retrieved  myself.  How 
ever,  I  do  not  take  all  the  credit  to  myself 
for  this;  circumstances  favored  me.  Shortly 
I  quitted  the  land  of  temptation  where  I 
had  been  born,  and  was  back  again  up 
North  living  on  dining  cars  and  in  hotels, 
with  nothing  more  seductive  to  resist  than 
processed  pastry  and  machine-made  short 
cakes  and  Thousand  Islands  dressing; 
which  made  the  fight  all  the  easier  to  win, 


126       One  Third  Off 

especially  as  regards  the  last  named.  I 
sometimes  wonder  why,  with  a  thousand 
islands  to  choose  from,  the  official  salad 
mixer  of  the  average  hotel  always  picks  the 
wrong  one. 

I  kept  on.  The  thing  proved  magically 
easy  of  accomplishment.  By  the  fit  of  my 
clothing,  if  by  nothing  else,  I  could  have 
told  that  several  of  my  more  noticeable  con- 
vexes  were  becoming  plane  surfaces  and 
gave  promise  in  due  season  of  becoming 
almost  concave,  some  of  'em.  But  there 
was  other  and  convincing  testimony  besides. 
I  could  tell  it  by  my  physical  feelings,  by 
my  viewpoint,  by  my  enhanced  zest  for 
work  and  for  play. 

Purposely,  for  the  first  month  I  refrained 
from  weighing  myself.  When  I  did  begin 
weighing  at  regular  intervals  I  found  I  was 
losing  at  a  rate  of  between  two  and  three 
pounds  a  week.  Moreover,  I  had  now 
proved  to  my  own  satisfaction  that  within 
sane  reasonable  limitations  I  could  resume 
eating  most  of  the  things  which  formerly  I 


Wherein  Our  Hero  Falters  127 

ate  to  excess  and  which  I  had  altogether 
eliminated  from  my  menus  during  the 
initiatory  stages  of  dieting. 

About  the  time  I  emerged  from  the  novi 
tiate  class  I  discerned  yet  one  more  gratify 
ing  fact.  If  I  were  in  the  woods,  camping 
and  fishing,  or  hunting  or  tramping  or  rid 
ing  or  taking  any  fairly  arduous  form  of 
exercise,  I  could  eat  pretty  much  anything 
and  everything,  no  matter  how  fattening  it 
might  be.  Work  in  the  open  air  whetted 
my  appetite,  but  the  added  exertion  burned 
up  the  waste  matter  so  that  the  surplus  went 
into  bodily  strength  instead  of  into  fatty 
layers.  Consumption  was  larger,  but  assim 
ilation  was  perfect. 

For  my  daily  life  at  home,  where  I  am 
Writing  this,  I  have  cut  out  these  things: 
All  the  cereals ;  nearly  all  the  white  bread ; 
all  the  hot  bread;  practically  all  pastries 
except  very  light  pastries;  white  potatoes 
absolutely;  rice  to  a  large  extent;  sausages 
and  fresh  pork  and  nearly  all  the  ham; 


128       One  Third  Off 

cream  in  my  coffee  and  on  fruits;  and  a  few 
of  the  starchier  vegetables. 

Of  butter  and  of  cheese  and  of  nuts  I 
eat  perhaps  one-third  the  amount  I  used  to 
eat,  and  of  meats,  roughly,  one-half  as  much 
as  before  the  dawn  of  reason  came.  Of 
everything  except  the  items  I  just  have 
enumerated  I  eat  as  freely  as  I  please.  And 
when  a  person  begins  to  reckon  up  every 
thing  else  among  the  edibles — flesh,  fowl, 
fish,  berries,  fruits,  vegetables  and  the  rest — 
he  finds  quite  a  sizable  list. 

I  shall  not  pretend  that  I  do  not  pine 
often  for  sundry  tabooed  things.  Take  pies, 
now — if  there  is  any  person  alive  who  likes 
his  pie  better  than  I  do  he's  the  king  of  the 
pie  likers,  that's  all.  And  I  am  desolated 
at  being  compelled  to  bar  out  the  rice — not 
the  gummy,  glued-together,  sticky,  messy 
stuff  which  Northerners  eat  with  milk  and 
sugar  on  it,  but  real  orthodox  rice  such  as 
only  Southerners  and  Chinamen  and  East 
Indians  know  how  to  prepare;  white  and 
fluffy  and  washed  free  of  all  the  lurking 


*  Wherein  Our  Hero  Falters  129 

library  paste ;  with  every  grain  standing  up 
separate  and  distinct  like  well-popped  corn 
and  treated  only  with  salt,  pepper  and  but 
ter,  or  with  salt,  pepper  and  gravy  before 
being  consumed. 

And  as  for  white  potatoes — well,  it  dis 
tresses  me  deeply  to  think  that  hereafter 
the  Irish  potato,  except  when  I'm  camping 
out,  will  be  to  me  merely  something  to 
stopper  the  spout  of  a  coal-oil  can  with,  or 
to  stab  the  office  pen  in  on  the  clerk's  desk 
in  an  American-plan  hotel.  For  I  have  ever 
cherished  the  Irish  potato  as  one  of  Na 
ture's  most  succulent  gifts  to  mankind.  I 
like  potatoes  all  styles  and  every  style, 
French  fried,  lyonnaise,  O'Brien,  shoe 
string  shape,  pants-button  design,  hashed 
brown,  creamed,  mashed,  stewed,  souffle — 
if  only  I  knew  who  blew  'em  up — and  most 
of  all,  baked  au  naturel  in  the  union  suit. 
And  I  miss  them  and  shall  keep  on  missing 
them.  But  no  longer  do  I  yearn  for  cream 
in  my  coffee,  now  that  it  is  out  of  it,  and  I 
am  getting  reconciled  to  dry  toast  for  break- 


130       One  Third  Off 

fast,  where  once  upon  a  time  only  members 
of  the  justly  famous  Flap  Jackson  family 
seemed  to  satisfy. 

Of  course  I  imbibe  alcoholic  stimulant 
when  and  where  procurable.  From  the 
standpoint  of  one  intent  upon  cutting  a  few 
running  feet  off  the  waistline  measurements 
this  distinctly  is  wrong,  as  full  well  I  know. 
But  what  would  you?  I  do  not  wish  to  pose 
as  an  eccentric.  I  have  no  desire  to  be 
pointed  out  as  a  person  aiming  to  make  him 
self  conspicuously  erratic  by  behaving  dif 
ferently  from  the  run  of  his  fellows.  Since 
the  advent  of  Prohibition  nearly  everybody 
I  meet  is  drinking  with  an  unbridled  en 
thusiasm;  and  when  not  engaged  in  the  act 
of  drinking  is  discussing  the  latest  and  most 
approved  methods  of  evading,  circumvent 
ing  and  defying  the  Federal  and  State  stat 
utes  against  drinking.  Therefore  I  drink, 
too.  Even  so,  I  have  not  yet  succeeded  in 
accustoming  my  palate  to  strong  waters  in 
discriminately  swallowed.  I  confess  to  a 


Wherein  Our  Hero  Falters  131 

fear  that  I  shall  never  make  a  complete  suc 
cess  of  the  undertaking. 

I  suppose  the  trouble  with  me  is  lack  of 
desire.  Prior  to  the  attempted  enforcement 
of  the  Eighteenth  Amendment  potable  and 
vatted  mixtures  had  but  small  lure  for  my 
palate,  or  my  stomach,  or  my  temperament. 
An  occasional  mild  cocktail  before  a  dinner, 
and  perhaps  twice  a  week  a  bottle  of  light 
beer  or  a  glass  of  light  wine  with  the  dinner 
— these,  in  those  old  wild  wicked  days  which 
ended  in  January,  1920,  practically  made 
up  the  tally  of  my  habitual  flirtations  with 
the  accursed  Demon.  In  the  springtime  I 
might  chamber  an  occasional  mint  julep, 
but  this,  really,  was  a  sort  of  rite,  a  gesture 
of  salute  to  the  young  green  year.  Likewise 
at  Christmas  time  I  partook  sparingly  of 
the  ceremonial  and  traditional  egg-nog. 
And  once  in  a  great  while,  on  a  bitter  cold 
night  in  the  winter,  a  hot  apple  toddy  was 
not  without  its  attractions.  But  these  in 
dulgences  about  covered  the  situation,  alco- 
holically  speaking,  so  far  as  I  was  con- 


132       One  Third  Off 

cerned.  For  me  the  strong,  heady  vintages, 
whether  still  or  sparkling,  and  the  more 
potent  distillations  had  mighty  little  appeal. 
Champagne,  to  me,  was  about  the  poorest 
substitute  for  good  well-water  that  had  ever 
been  proposed;  and  the  Messrs.  Haig  & 
Haig  never  had  to  put  on  a  night  shift  at 
the  works  on  my  account. 

Yet  I  came  from  a  mid-section  of  the  re 
public  where  in  the  olden  days  Bourbon 
whiskey  was  regarded  as  a  proper  staff  of 
life.  The  town  where  I  was  born  was  one 
of  the  last  towns  below  Mason  &  Dixon's 
Line  to  stand  out  against  the  local  option 
wave  which  had  swept  the  smaller  interior 
communities  of  America;  and  my  native 
state  of  Kentucky  was  one  of  the  two  re 
maining  states  of  the  South,  Louisiana  be 
ing  the  other,  which  had  not  officially  gone 
dry  by  legislative  action  up  to  the  time  when 
Br'er  Volstead's  pleasant  little  act  went 
over  nationally. 

While  I  was  growing  up,  through  boy 
hood,  through  my  youth  and  on  into  man- 


Wherein  Our  Hero  Falters  133 

hood,  I  had  the  example  of  whiskey-drink 
ing  all  about  me.  Many  of  our  oldest  and 
most  respected  families  owned  and  operated 
distilleries.  Some  of  them  had  been  dis 
tillers  for  generations  past;  they  were  proud 
of  the  purity  of  their  product.  Men  of  all 
stations  in  life  drank  freely  and  with  no 
sense  of  shame  in  their  drinking.  Mainly 
they  took  their'n  straight  or  in  toddies;  in 
those  parts,  twenty  years  ago,  the  high-ball 
was  looked  upon  with  suspicion  as  a  foreign 
error  which  had  been  imported  by  mis 
guided  individuals  up  North  who  didn't 
know  any  better  than  to  drown  good  liquor 
in  charged  water.  There  were  decanters  on 
the  sideboard;  there  were  jimmy-Johns  in 
the  cellar;  and  down  at  the  place  on  the 
corner  twenty  standard  varieties  of  bottled 
Bourbons  and  ryes  were  to  be  had  at  an  ex 
ceedingly  moderate  price.  Bar-rail  instep, 
which  is  a  fallen  arch  reversed,  was  a  com 
mon  complaint  among  us. 

Even  elderly  ladies  who  looked  with  ab 
horrence  upon  the  drinking  habit  were  not 


134       One  Third  Off 

denied  their  wee  bit  nippy.  They  got  it, 
never  knowing  that  they  got  it.  Some  of 
them  stayed  pleasantly  corned  year  in  and 
year  out  and  supposed  all  the  time  they 
merely  were  enjoying  good  health.  For 
them  stimulating  tonics  containing  not  in 
excess  of  sixty  per  cent  of  pure  grain  alco 
hol  were  provided  by  pious  patent-medicine 
manufacturers  in  Chattanooga  and  Atlanta 
and  Louisville  —  earnest-minded,  philan 
thropic  patriots  these  were,  who  strongly 
advocated  the  closing-up  of  the  Rum  Hole, 
which  was  their  commonest  pet  name  for 
the  corner  saloon,  but  who  viewed  with  a 
natural  repugnance  those  provisions  of  the 
Pure  Food  Act  requiring  printed  confession 
as  to  fluid  contents  upon  the  labels  of  their 
own  goods.  It  was  no  uncommon  thing  in 
the  Sunny  Southland  to  observe  a  staunch 
churchgoer  who  was  an  outspoken  advo 
cate  of  temperance  rising  up  and  giving 
three  rousing  hiccups  for  good  old  Dr. 
Bunkum's  Nerve  Balm.  And  distinctly  I 
recall  the  occasion  when  a  stalwart  mother 


Wherein  Our  Hero  Falters  135 

in  Israel,  starting  off  to  attend  a  wedding 
and  feeling  the  need  of  a  little  special  ton- 
ing-up  beforehand,  took  three  wineglassfuls 
of  her  favorite  Blood  Purifier  instead  of  the 
customary  one  which  she  took  before  a 
meal ;  and,  as  a  consequence,  on  her  arrival 
at  the  scene  of  festivities  was  with  difficulty 
dissuaded  from  snatching  down  the  South 
ern  smilax  and  other  decorations  that  she 
might  twine  with  them  a  wreath  to  crown 
herself.  She  somehow  had  got  the  idea  that 
she  was  the  queen  emeritus  of  the  May.  It 
was  reported  about  town  afterward  that 
she  tried  to  do  the  giant  swing  on  the  parlor 
chandelier.  But  this  was  a  gross  exagger 
ation;  she  only  tried  to  hang  by  her  legs 
from  it. 

Reared,  as  I  was,  amid  such  surroundings 
and  in  a  commonwealth  abounding  in  dis 
tilleries,  rectifying  works,  blending  estab 
lishments,  bottle-houses,  barrel-houses,  and 
saloons,  I  should  have  been  a  hopeless  in 
ebriate  long  before  I  came  of  age.  The 
literature,  of  any  total  abstinence  society 


136       One  Third  Off 

would  prove  conclusively  that  I  never  had 
a  chance  to  avoid  filling  a  drunkard's  grave. 
Yet  somehow  I  escaped  the  fate  ordained 
for  me.  As  I  say,  I  drank  sparingly  and 
for  long  periods  not  at  all,  until  Prohibition 
came.  Then  I  began  doing  as  about  ninety 
per  cent  of  my  fellow-adult  Americans  be 
gan  doing — which  was  to  take  a  drink 
when  the  opportunity  offered.  As  I  diag 
nose  it,  we  nearly  all  are  actuated  now  by 
much  the  same  instinct  which  causes  a  small 
boy  to  loot  a  jam  closet.  He  doesn't  particu 
larly  want  all  that  jam  but  he  takes  the  jam 
because  it  is  summarily  denied  him  and  be 
cause  he's  afraid  he  may  never  again  get  a 
whack  at  unlimited  jam. 

To  my  way  of  thinking,  the  main  result 
of  the  effort  drastically  to  enforce  Prohibi 
tion,  aside  from  making  us  a  nation  of  law 
breakers,  law-evaders,  sneaks,  bribers,  boot 
leggers,  bigots,  corruptionists  and  moral 
cowards,  has  been  to  transfer  the  burden  of 
inebriety  from  one  set  of  shoulders  to  an 
other  set  of  shoulders.  Men  who  formerly 


Wherein  Our  Hero  Falters  137 

drank  to  excess  have  sobered  up,  against 
their  will,  for  lack  of  cash  or  lack  of  chance 
to  buy  hard  liquor.  They  cannot  rake  to 
gether  enough  coin  to  purchase  the  adulter 
ated  stuff  at  ten  times  the  price  they  had 
paid  for  better  liquor  before  the  law  went 
into  effect.  On  the  other  hand,  men — and 
women — who  formerly  drank  but  little  are 
now  drinking  to  excess,  some  of  them  being 
prompted,  I  think,  by  a  feeling  of  protest 
against  what  they  regard  as  an  invasion  of 
their  personal  liberties  and  some,  no  doubt, 
inspired  by  a  perfectly  understandable  im 
pulse  to  do  a  thing  which  is  forbidden  when 
the  doing  of  it  gives  them  a  sense  of  ad 
venture  and  daring. 

Far  be  it  from  an  humble  citizen  to  crit 
icise  our  national  law-making  body.  Far 
be  it  from  him,  as  he  contemplates  the  spec 
tacle  frequently  presented  under  the  dome 
of  the  Capitol  at  Washington,  to  paraphrase 
Ethan  Allen's  celebrated  remark  when  he 
took  Fort  Ticonderoga  in  the  name  of  Je 
hovah  and  the  Continental  fathers  and  ex- 


138       One  Third  Off 

claim:  "Congress — oh,  my  God!"  Far  be 
it,  I  repeat,  from  such  a  one  to  do  such 
things  as  these.  But  I  trust  I  may  be  par 
doned  for  venturing  the  statements  that  ex 
cessive  drinking  already  was  going  out  of 
fashion  in  this  country,  that  the  treating  evil 
was  in  a  fair  way  to  die  a  natural  death  any 
how,  and  that  the  present  sumptuary  at 
tempt  to  cure  us  overnight  of  a  habit  which 
has  been  ingrained  in  the  very  fibre  of  the 
race  for  so  far  back  as  the  history  of  the 
race  runs,  has  only  had  the  effect  of  making 
a  bad  thing  worse. 

At  that,  I  hold  no  brief  for  the  brewer  and 
the  distiller.  They  got  exactly  what  was 
coming  to  them.  Had  they,  as  a  class,  been 
content  to  obey  the  existing  laws,  instead 
of  conniving  to  break  them;  had  they  kept 
their  meddling  fingers  out  of  local  politics; 
had  they  realized  more  fully  their  responsi 
bilities  as  manufacturers  and  purveyors  of 
potentially  dangerous  products;  had  they 
been  willing  to  cooperate  with  right-think 
ing  men  in  a  sane  and  orderly  campaign  for 


Wherein  Our  Hero  Falters  139 

the  cleaning-up  and  the  proper  regulation 
of  the  liquor  traffic ;  had  they  seen  that  the 
common  man's  inarticulate  but  very  definite 
resentment  against  the  iniquities  of  the  cor 
ner  saloon  system  was  tending  to  the  legal 
abolition  of  the  whole  business  of  licensed 
drinking,  I  believe  we  should  have  had  no 
Eighteenth  Amendment  saddled  upon  us 
and  no  Volstead  act  to  bridle  us. 

In  the  final  analysis,  and  stripping  aside 
the  lesser  contributory  causes,  I  maintain 
there  were  just  two  outstanding  reasons  why 
this  country  went  dry  after  the  fashion  in 
which  it  did  go  dry:  One  reason  was  the 
Distiller;  the  other  was  the  Brewer.  And 
for  the  woes  of  either  or  both  I,  for  one,  de 
cline  to  shed  a  single  tear. 

How  a  fellow  does  run  on  when  he  gets 
on  the  subject  which  is  uppermost  in  the 
minds  of  the  American  people  this  year! 
All  I  intended  to  say,  when  I  started  off  on 
this  tack,  a  few  pages  back,  was  that  if  I 
absolutely  and  completely  cut  out  all  alco 
holic  stimulant  no  doubt  I  should  be  reduc- 


140       One  Third  Off 

ing  my  weight  much  faster  than  is  the  case 
at  this  writing.  To-day  practically  all  the 
members  in  good  standing  of  the  Order  of 
Friendly  Sons  of  the  Boiled  Spinach — I 
mean  the  dietetic  sharps — agree  that  he  or 
she  who  is  banting  will  be  well-advised  to 
drink  not  at  all.  For  the  most  part  they  do 
not  make  a  moral  issue  of  this  detail.  Some 
of  them  refuse  to  concede  that  a  teetotaler 
is  necessarily  healthier  or  happier  or  more 
useful  to  the  world  than  the  moderate  im 
biber  is.  They  merely  point  out  that  whis 
kies  and  beers  are,  for  the  majority  of  hu 
mans,  fattening  things  and  should  therefore 
be  eliminated  from  the  diet  of  those  wishful 
to  lose  their  superfluous  adipose  tissue. 
Here,  again,  they  disagree  with  their  profes 
sional  forebears.  The  experts  of  the  preced 
ing  generations,  being  mainly  Englishmen 
and  Germans,  could  not  conceive  of  living 
without  drinking.  Some  advocated  wines, 
some  ales,  some  a  mixture  of  both  with  an 
occasional  measure  of  spirits  added  for  the 
sake  of  digestion.  But  among  the  depend- 


therein  Our  Hero  Falters  141 

able  dietetic  authorities  of  the  present  day 
there  appears  to  be  no  wide  range  of  argu 
ment  on  this  point.  They  pretty  generally 
agree  that  even  a  casual  indulgence  in 
beverages  is  not  indicated  for  those  who  seek 
to  reduce.  I  am  sure  they  are  right.  But  as 
I  remarked  just  now,  what  can  you  do  when 
you  are  encompassed  about  by  the  bottle- 
toting,  sop-it-up-behind-the-door  custom 
which  has  sprung  up  since  Prohibition  was 
slipped  over  on  us  by  the  Anti-Saloon 
League? 

I  confess  that  I  have  not  the  strength  of 
character  to  swim,  almost  alone,  against  the 
social  current.  So  I  partake  of  the  occa 
sional  snort  and  to  that  extent  stand  a  self- 
admitted  apologist  for  an  offense  which  no 
true  reductionist  should  commit. 

But  I  claim  that  otherwise — that  in  so  far 
as  the  solid  foodstuffs  are  concerned — I 
have,  for  my  own  individual  case,  exactly 
the  right  idea  about  it. 


Lithesome  Grace  Regained!\<\3 


CHAPTER  ELEVEN 


Three  Cheers  for  Lithesome 
Grace  Regained/ 


Lithesome  Grace  Regained! 145 


CHAPTER  XI 

Three  Cheers  for  Lithesome 
Grace  Regained! 

MY  advice  to  the  man  or  the  woman 
who  is  in  the  same  fix  I  was  in  is 
to  go  and  do  likewise,  with  varia 
tions  to  suit  the  individual  temperament. 
It  means  self-denial  but  self-denial  perse 
vered  in  is  a  virtue,  and  virtue  he  will  find — 
or  she  will — not  alone  is  its  own  reward  but 
a  number  of  additional  rewards  as  well. 
Let  my  late  fellow  sufferer  likewise  pat 
ronize  the  gymnasium  and  the  steam  room 
and  the  cold  plunge  if  he  so  chooses.  If 
he  desires  to  have  automatic  pores,  all  right. 
As  for  me,  I  recall  what  the  Good  Book 
says  about  the  pores  which  ye  have  always 
with  ye,  and  I  decline  to  worry  about  the 
present  uncultured  state  of  mine.  Let  him 


146       One  Third  Off 

try  the  electric  rollers  and  the.electric  baths, 
if  such  be  his  bent;  no  doubt  they  have  their 
value.  And  by  all  means  let  him  consult  a 
qualified  physician  if  he  fears  either  that 
he  is  overdoing  or  underdoing  his  banting. 
Personally,  though,  I  am  satisfied  with  the 
plan  I  tried  out,  of  being  my  own  private 
test  tube. 

I  claim  that  I  have  better  information 
touching  on  what  sustenance  I  need  than 
any  outsider  ever  can  hope  to  have  unless 
he  breaks  into  me  surgically.  I  claim  that 
a  series  of  rational  experiments  should  tell 
any  rational  human  how  much  he  needs  to 
eat  and  what  he  needs  to  eat  in  order  to  re 
duce  his  bulk  and  yet  keep  his  powers  and 
his  bodily  vigor  unimpaired.  I  am  not 
speaking  now,  understand  me,  of  those  un 
fortunates  with  whom  obesity  is  a  disease, 
but  of  those  who  owe  their  grossness  of  out 
line  to  gluttony.  Lacking  vital  statistics  on 
the  subject,  I  nevertheless  dare  assert  that 
these  latter  constitute  fully  90  per  cent  of 
those  among  the  American  people  who  are 


Lithesome  Grac  e  Regained!  147 

distinctly  and  uncomfortably  and  fre 
quently  unhealthily  fat. 

Remains  but  one  fly  in  the  ointment. 
.$ince  Tony  Sarg  is  going  to  illustrate  this 
treatise,  then  Tony  must  revise  the  old 
working  plans.  For  my  figure  is  not  so 
much  pro  as  once  it  was.  It  is  more  con, 
if  you  get  my  meaning — the  profile  curves 
in  toward,  instead  of  being,  as  formerly,  so 
noticeably  from. 

Still,  I  should  worry  about  the  troubles 
of  an  artist,  even  though  a  friend.  I 
weighed  myself  this  morning.  Three 
months  ago,  when  I  set  out  to  reduce  my 
belt  line  and  my  collar  size,  I  snatched  the 
beam  down  ker-smack  at  two  hundred  and 
thirty-six  pounds,  stripped.  This  morning 
I  weighed  exactly  one  hundred  and  ninety- 
seven,  including  amalgam  fillings  and  the 
rights  of  translation  into  foreign  languages, 
including  the  Scandinavian.  One  hundred 
and  eighty-five  pounds  is  my  ultimate  aim. 
Howsoever,  I  may  keep  right  on  when  I 
attain  that  figure  and  justify  the  title  of  this 


148       One  Third  Off 

book  by  taking  a  full  one  third  off.  In  either 
event,  though,  I  shall  know  exactly  where 
I  am  going  and  I'm  on  my  way.  And  I 
feel  bully  and  I'm  happy  about  it  and  boast 
fully  proud. 

Three  rousing  cheers  for  lithesome  grace 
regained! 


THE  END 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


LD  2lA-60m-2,'67 
(H241slO)476B 


General  Library 

University  of  California 

Berkeley 


